Forgotten Ever After
by michellemybelle25
Summary: Sometimes happily ever after isn't the end of the story.
1. Chapter 1

I'm back! How I've missed you all! The last story I posted I said I wasn't going to be posting for awhile, if ever again, after that plagiarism incident this summer. Well, after a few very encouraging notes from some of my fans and a lot of support, I decided to be brave and put my words back out there. Once again let me reiterate that my stories are copywritten; anyone who posts them on another website without permission is breaking the law and I have a right to seek legal action.

That's a warning for my piece of mind. Now onto the good parts. Those of you who know me know I am not a chapter writer. But this story was long, so I broke it into 5 posts. I promise not to make you wait long in between posts! :)

This story is dedicated in a very special way to my cover artist and friend Jessica. Thank you for brainstorming it with me during the White Sox game. You are amazing!

SUMMARY: Sometimes happily ever after isn't the end of the story.

"Forgotten Ever After"

And they lived happily ever after…

That's the customary fairytale ending, isn't it? The drama over, the villain defeated, and all is perfection to come. Perhaps I was a fool to put so much credence in that fictional pattern of events and take happily ever after as a guarantee. But…we _were_ happy, and as a child of too many stories, I truly believed it would go on for the rest of our lives.

I've come to learn that happily ever after is a sugarcoated lie, intended to make falling in love and getting married seem the grand culmination in a young girl's life. It's a trick. Sometimes our greatest challenges and most grievous traumas arrive after the _happily ever after_ is scripted on the page. Mine made a final denouement beneath the opera house into the second act's curtain and left the door open for so much more chaos to come. I never would have thought it. I hadn't reached happily ever after at all…

As I said, we were happy, blissfully so in those first months after the Opera Ghost became nothing but an exaggerated legend. By all accounts, the masked ghost had crossed over to the other side of living, gone from the world, and why was his unfinished business suddenly completed? Because he'd married his true love and no longer had time to haunt opera houses when he'd rather spend every second in _my_ arms.

Yes, I married the resident Opera Ghost. Moreover, I _loved_ the resident Opera Ghost. I'd spent too long running from that truth, but when the curtain had fallen on the penultimate scene and Erik had sent me off with Raoul, stealing my choice away and putting a new one before me, I surpassed every opera heroine's strength and returned to my heart's true desire. I could still recall the image of his disfigured face the moment I'd burst back into the underground house with all my dreams streaming beneath my footfalls.

He'd thought it over and done; he'd broken his own heart for me, and I…I put it back together. Disbelief and hope had been beautiful on the distorted canvas of his face the second I'd covered it in claiming kisses and made it mine.

_And they lived happily ever after_…

I am taunted now by a promise I so readily believed in. For six moths, things had been perfection. I never considered that my husband had once been the Opera Ghost. That title meant _nothing_ anymore. Now he was just Erik, and I was just Christine, and we were in love. Forgetting and forgiving our past mistakes simply happened on its own. Nothing mattered but each other.

We still lived beneath the opera house, a temporary respite according to Erik. He claimed to have marvelous plans for a house beyond the city limits, and I never questioned. There was a part of me that insisted he was lying. For six months, we'd seen no one but each other. I still sang, but it was in the privacy of the underground house, not the grandiose stage of the opera house above us. I knew he was afraid to let me back out into the world, terrified when the Vicomte had crept in like a shadow from a horror tale once before and tried to destroy our love story. And I loved Erik so much that I permitted his paranoia and did not fret over lost opportunities or friendships when he filled my days with a delight I'd never known existed. We could have spent forever locked away beneath the opera, and I wouldn't have regretted it, but… Happily ever after began to show its shoddy construction and started a crack in its foundation with one blatant realization.

I was pregnant.

The second I realized it, everything felt changed. I looked around our happy little home and wondered how we could selfishly deny our child the right of sunlight and fresh air, of friends and a world beyond four walls. Every frenzied musing built up my fear to share the news with Erik. One little revelation was about to shatter his conjured ending for our story.

I tried to delay revealing my secret and continue the dream a bit longer, but Erik was too intuitive. I could act an enthusiastic demeanor to my heart's content, but I noted the shrewd look in the back of his mismatched eyes, the expression that insisted his inquisitive mind was reeling behind his smile and trying to decipher me as if I were a puzzle full of missing pieces.

But my adamancy won me a few days before an inquisition I knew must come yet dreaded with every fiber of my being. I gave _myself_ away and cursed my ignorance for it.

By my calculations, I was almost seven weeks along, surely not enough to be showing, but with the new knowledge in my head, I could not forget the child growing inside of me. One night that week as Erik took me to bed and undressed me with eager hands, I tried desperately to be in the moment, to lose thought in the hazy desire flaring in his mismatched eyes. But as he began to press heated kisses down my body, following the curve of my lowest rib and onward down my stomach, I flinched.

It was miniscule at best, but as his eyes darted to mine and I caught wisps of collecting knowledge in their depths, I skirted his hold, scooting off the mattress and seeking my wrap with trembling hands.

I felt his eyes always on me as I covered my body as if ashamed of it. How ridiculous! To be shamed by the baby I was already half in love with… But I loved Erik so much, and I was terrified how he would accept this, _if_ he _could_ accept it, …if he'd only come to blame _me_ for ending our dream and consider our baby a punishment I'd bestowed upon him.

My heavy gaze drifted to where he still sat studying me from our bed. His shirt was mussed, parted to the waist, and I studied his pale, thin torso. He had scars. Products of the cruel world he was keeping me from. I understood his need to cage me like a nightingale. It wasn't just a fear of losing my affection; it was a fear for what consequences the world bore, an urgency to protect me. In these underground walls, he knew I was safe. In his mindset, that was his greatest job as husband: to make certain I was never even grazed by the sort of trauma he'd endured.

His face was the other half of that story, the damage he'd been born with and spent a lifetime abused for. His features were more like a skeleton's than a man's. He'd once told me he was _sorry_ for that. Imagine, to be sorry for something he had no control over and could not help. It had hurt my heart to hear him say such a thing, and I'd made it my mission from then on to change his opinion, to make him _grateful_ he looked the way he did because _I_ thought he was beautiful. I'd taught myself to see his beauty; I was determined to do the same for him.

"Christine…," he sighed, heavy and uncertain, "are you going to tell me now?"

"Tell you what?" It was impulse to act innocent and pushed on by a worry one word would change every feeling he held for me.

"I'm not a fool," he asserted. "Though I certainly must seem one not to have figured it out sooner. Typically, there is a certain time in the month where you shy away from my advances. …You haven't denied me in _weeks_. Are you going to tell me now?" he asked it again, and I couldn't stop the tears from filling my eyes.

"I'm sorry…" I said it without thinking. I felt _guilt_ and couldn't stop an apology. An apology for my baby…

Pain creased that malformed face, and in a rush, he was standing before me, brushing the tears from my cheeks with gentle fingers. "What have you to be sorry for, _petite_?" he crooned so tenderly that it only brought my tears faster in their fall.

"I…I ruined everything." It was my greatest fear, and I laid the blame I was terrified _he_ would upon my own shoulders.

"Say it," he suddenly begged. "Tell me, _ange_, please."

I nodded miserably and whispered between tears, "I'm pregnant."

I saw the shock hit him. I was doubtless he already knew, but speculating and hearing it confirmed were two different things. A year ago, I would have been subject to a rash response from his temper first and foremost. A lashing of insult and cruelty to hide a mélange of fear and mistrust. Now…I found no anger, no resentment or bitterness; I found an unguarded fear that was tinged in sadness before every curved emotion lifted to straight lines.

Watching me carefully all the while, Erik knelt on the carpet at my feet, every motion no more than silent whispers. Slow and tremulous, he brought one hand to my belly, delicately resting his palm atop the woven silk of my wrap. This time I forced myself to keep still and wait, to trust when instinct begged me to draw away again.

Mismatched eyes were unsettled on mine, and then they roamed to the protected place his hand touched, looking for signs I knew had yet to be present. He rubbed ever so gently, and in spite of every heavy revelation between us, I felt the skin beneath my wrap tingle with such a radiated rush of passion and feeling. I loved this man. He barely had to touch me, and I was overcome in too much sensation for one body to hold.

"Erik…" I whispered his name, half-afraid when he had yet to grant me his response to my life-altering news.

But he parted my wrap, seeking my skin beneath and the unnoticeable place where our baby rested, and as my heart ached from the inside out, he set his misshapen mouth to the spot and held a kiss against our miracle. I sobbed with the contact, my hand darting out to cup his crown and hold him there a blissful moment more.

A soul-healing kiss, and in the hairbreadth space between my belly and his lips, he whispered, "Hello, my precious one. I'm your father, and I love you so much."

My tears tumbled from my jaw-line, and as one struck his damaged cheek, he lifted those eyes and ensnared me in their multi-toned web. "Do you love our baby, Christine? …You said you were sorry. Why? Are you upset that you carry _my_ child in your womb?"

"No, no," I quickly insisted, covering the hand he set to my bare belly with my own. "I love it, but I…I was afraid you would be unhappy and…hate me for it."

"Christine," he crooned in that angel voice that brought goose bumps to my skin with its beauty. "How could I be unhappy? A child… I never thought…" A slow smile spread across those oddly-sculpted lips, and he brushed it to my belly as I glimpsed the briefest silhouette of tears in his eyes. "I'm going to be a father. …A father, Christine. You gave me the greatest gift of my life when you told me you loved me, and now this… I don't deserve such exquisiteness."

It was impossible not to mirror his smile and tears right back. He was _happy_. Happy with a truth I'd feared would drive us apart. No…no, he _loved_ our baby… Maybe happily ever after _did_ exist after all.

His lips were forming more adorations against my belly, tender and languid, but having my body so exposed before him had to lead us back down a more salacious path. His free hand stroked the curve of my calf, lingered behind my knee, and then gradually traveled the expanse of my thigh.

I shivered, unable to refuse, _not wanting_ to refuse, as his hand slid between my legs. His fingers were adamant; they trailed the length of my womanhood before opening my wet folds. A look was cast to my expectant eyes, his filled with a potent combination of hunger and emotion as he buried his mouth within my parted wetness.

Crying out at his seduction, I swayed on my feet, and my hand fisted in his hair, tight, unbreakable. Dear God, he was such a fervent lover. Since the first day, he'd been determined to learn every movement, every caress, every touch to make my body sing. If he'd thought he needed such skill to outweigh his deficiencies, that he had to _make me _desire him, he was so very mistaken. But I was disinclined to tell him when I benefitted so much from his over-achievement.

His misshapen mouth was devouring me, but his hand was yet tender and cupping my belly, unwilling to let go. He loved us _both_; he was desperate to show us. And all my fears seemed pointless with his caresses as proofs.

His moan vibrated the surface of my womanhood and sent shivers down my spine before his tongue made frantic circles, knowing exactly what compelled me into a frenzy.

"Erik, Erik," I pleaded, meeting his always-intent eyes and as overcome by his disfigured face as his actions. Only _he_ brought these sensations to life within me, and only _he_ brought such an ache.

He drew back for the briefest instant, but only to hoarsely demand, "You love me, Christine, don't you? And our child? You love us both and will be ours forever, won't you?"

"Yes, yes, Erik, yours." I meant my declamation even with desire as my inspiration. I loved him; I needed him; I ached for him.

Another moan spoke his approval as he yanked my open wrap from my shoulders and dragged me back to our awaiting bed. I wasn't given time to contemplate his paranoia as he jerked his clothes off and drove into my eager body in a vehement thrust.

My peak arrived as he began to move, extracting throaty cries from my lungs. As I clung to his neck with bracing arms and suffered the waves of an ecstasy so violent that it stole reason, I noted that he halted and kept still and unmoving within me, watching me with those ever-studious eyes and absorbing every second.

"My God, are you beautiful," he hoarsely breathed, "and how sweet you taste on my tongue! I could bury my lips inside you forever, only coming up every so often to breathe. You are perfection. …I love you so!"

His impassioned words flitted through my euphoric haze, grounding me back in reality and swelling the love in my already overflowing heart. With my wits fading in and out of the forefront, I held his frail body flush to my own and savored his renewed thrusts. Desire was deep moans and whispers of my name, and then it was impending shouts and fingers that dug into my spine in his unbreakable grip. I was complete at that moment, content with every facet of my life and the choices I'd made to put me there.

Content, loved, and I fell asleep curved against his body as his palm gently stroked our growing baby and exuded his adoration through the boundaries of skin between.

He loved us, …and yet when I awoke, I was alone in our bed.

It was not an uncommon occurrence to close my eyes to his disfigured face and open them again to a bare pillow. He often made his excursions in the world during the dark, early morning hours, well before people inhabited the city streets. I knew no fear as I rose at an hour a clock told me was sunrise when I had no picture confirmation. No light to peek inside from a tinted sky… That had to change.

I'd defeated the challenge of revealing our baby's existence, and that was certainly the most difficult I'd ever been given. Next on my plate was a valid argument about raising our child in the sunlight. Erik _had_ to see the necessity in it; I was adamant that I wouldn't give up until he did.

I spent the morning laying out an unbendable declaration to support a move into a real house in the world. Every viable detail was organized in my mind, and I recited my lines over and over again until they were a well-rehearsed script ready to be delivered, …as soon as my audience was in place.

Where was Erik? As the morning began to taper away and the hours wore out their minutes, I began to worry. He'd never been gone past breakfast time, and now it was half past noon, and I was still alone, pacing the house like a caged tiger.

My palm came to rest upon my belly, wishing for proof to touch and hold and find comfort in. For now, it was more a concept than a reality, but I loved it already. Erik's approval seemed to make it acceptable to feel such emotions to their full extent. Our baby…and Erik loved it, too, …or so he'd said. He loved, but why was he not here reveling in it as I was? Why was he taking so long to return?

My cavernous mind spun webs of anxiety and created stories to get lost within. Perhaps…well, perhaps he didn't love our baby at all. Perhaps he'd spoken such words only to appease me when in truth, he was waiting for the ideal chance to escape. Perhaps… But _no_, I insisted to my suspicion. Erik no longer played pretenses with me, and I was certain I'd have known if he were lying. How could it have been lies when he'd touched as tenderly as I now touched the very spot our baby was developing. No, I believed his words, …didn't I?

But the more the clock made itself an enemy and ticked its seconds away, the more doubt gnawed at my insides. Where was Erik? Maybe…he'd needed time to interpret every potential outcome to our new predicament. Maybe alone he was now obsessing over what our child might look like. Maybe he was finding the fears he should have had the previous night. Oh God, what if he were coming to hate me after all?

I tried desperately to stay firm in my own mind, to _know_ what my heart felt as truth, but day passed and night arrived without ceremony when dark was already a requirement in the depths, and my husband was yet missing. Pacing had grown stale, and I was now curled in the large cushions of Erik's chair, fighting tears with every breath. _Oh God, please_… He had to return.

Just after midnight, I succumbed to my tears, afraid and lonely, aching in my heart. As they burned their tracks down my cheeks, I said a silent prayer to my dethroned Angel of Music, pleading mercy and forgiveness for whatever sin I'd committed to earn a punishment as great as my husband's abandonment. I said it because I didn't know what else to say, and then in the midst of my sobs, I fell into a dreamless state of unconsciousness.

* * *

><p>Knocking, sharp and fevered, burst my temporary rest to pieces. I was disoriented to wake so abruptly in Erik's chair and not recall why…for two blissful seconds of reprieve. As reality crashed into me, I stumbled to my feet and raced for the door while knocks grew more frantic.<p>

Sense spoke one warning: Erik wouldn't knock. But my shaking hands reached for the doorknob without delay and ignored sense completely.

"Oh God, no…"

"He's alive…just barely," the Persian man assured first and foremost as I felt the color drain from my skin and swayed dangerously close to fainting on my feet.

My Erik, my beloved was a mass of limp limbs, sagging in the hold of the small foreign man. He was broken and damaged, his unmasked face a cacophony of injury and…_blood_. There was blood everywhere, staining the tattered remnants of his clothing and the pale skin I remembered kissing the night before.

"What…happened?" I stammered, unnoticed tears filling my eyes and blurring my view until I dared to blink and let them tumble.

"Let me get him inside, and I'll tell you all I know," he promised. His tone was grave, and I hated it.

But I stepped aside and guided the way to our bedroom, crying silent and only half-acknowledged as I scampered to the bedside and gestured for him to lay Erik on the mattress. Lay him because he was unconscious and wounded and barely living…

Tears only fell quicker as the foreign man stretched Erik's tall, thin form onto the bed and I got a better glimpse of the damage, _so much_ damage.

His shirt was torn to the waist, and as it parted with the motion of being laid down, I caught a sight that spurred horror. _U, R, D._ Cuts in vivid letter shapes. It was not hard to figure out the entire word, and as my quivering fingers captured the hem of his shirt and drew it further away, I only confirmed my suspicion. _MURDERER_ cut into his chest.

My gasp was my inhalation and a sob my exhalation as I jerked his shirt further away and uncovered _MONSTER_ and _DEMON_. Ugly appellations carved into his very skin like branding marks. And worse yet, I glimpsed an _R_ on his lower hip, and sobbing, I folded back the buckle of his pants and found _RAPIST_. My stomach turned on every vile letter.

"Who…who did this to him?" I cried the question, fisting my trembling fingers in material when I was too much a coward to touch violated skin.

"I don't know," the Persian man sadly replied, and I finally dragged my wide, horror-stricken stare to his regard, finding him solemn and almost as traumatized as I was. "I found him in the alley that leads to the catacombs. He'd obviously been…beaten to unconsciousness."

My sob drowned out any more words for a long minute as I finally clamped onto bravery and set my shaking hand against his heartbeat, atop the _ON_ of _MONSTER_.

"Why…?" It was all I was suddenly urgent to know. A question sense said probably bore flimsy answers.

The Persian huffed a discontented breath and replied, "Justice was never served, not to the notorious Opera Ghost, and people… They don't forget, Madame. Erik was taking a chance every time he set foot in the world above. He knew that, but he probably never realized something like this could happen."

He trailed off, and I thought I saw the silhouettes of tears before he fixed his attention on Erik's injured face. The mask was gone, likely stolen away, and his greatest flaw was now a mess of bruises, swelling, and blood. Dear Lord, …his assailants had shown no mercy even to a canvas already so laden with mistakes.

The Persian's voice wavered, but he added, "Next to him, I saw the broken pieces of a mahogany cradle. I…I wager they shattered it before they chose the word 'rapist'."

I buried another sob against the back of my hand and pieced the scene together. Erik had gone out to buy a cradle for our baby, …a baby the world dubbed an abomination and product of rape.

My frantic gaze suddenly darted to the Persian. I had not seen him since the night he'd brought Raoul to the underground house in a misguided attempt to come to my aid. With urgency in my tears, I insisted, "It isn't true. I swear it on my life. Erik is no rapist, and my child is not a sin-"

"I know, I know," he assured with a kindness I had not expected. A sad smile tinged his lips. "I saw Erik the day before yesterday, and he confided in me that he suspected he would be a father. I'm sorry if it's presumptuous of me to speak such news aloud, but…he was so happy. I've never seen him carry such blissful hope. And…so it _is_ true, Madame?"

"Yes, Monsieur, it's true." Just hearing Erik's elation made me love him more, and as I trailed my gaze over his deceptively peaceful face, I prayed I got to speak the oath again and again for all eternity. …I couldn't lose him now.

Grabbing one of his hands in mine, I first inspected his skinned knuckles before bringing that hand to my belly and holding it in place. "Erik," I bid in a soft breath, "please…come back to us."

I knew the foreign man watched, but I did not heed his presence until he said a somber and final, "Amen."


	2. Chapter 2

The damage was worse than I had first perceived. Once the foreign man let us be and left with an oath to find out who was responsible for Erik's attack, I busied my unsteady hands and stripped my husband of his tattered clothing, cleaning wounds and their residue. The words carved into his skin were thankfully shallow in their construction. I knew that in time, they'd heal to nothing, but for now, they screamed in red accusation every epithet I did not want to associate with my Erik. Such vile cruelty!

The words were minor, though, compared with bruises on his abdomen and back, belligerent purples in every hue and splotching his pale skin like ink stains. They bled their mark beneath his cells and crept up to that skeleton face, tinting unnatural flesh and breaking through to bleed at soft spots like the corner of his lips or the deep ravine of an eye socket. His forehead was equally gashed to a rainbow, and the wound made an obscure knot that I delicately outlined with a washcloth.

"Erik," I breathed tenderly, but no response met me, not even a flinch to say he'd heard. The first few hours I had hope that any second would bring a stirring from his swollen eyelids, but the more time passed, the more flustered I grew. He was so still and pale beneath his injuries, so _death-like_. The word taunted me, and over and over, I checked his heart for its beating evidence of life.

Once again my mind was an enemy and conjured visions of what Erik had endured. Beaten, cut, demeaned and bullied. …He'd gone to buy our sweet baby a cradle, probably meant it as a surprise to prove his happiness. He'd been happy… And happily ever after had just spit at us both.

The next time I looked at a clock, it was late evening, and I imagined the lengthening shadows of sunset painting the landscape in the world above. I'd given it up six months ago for love and hadn't realized that my 'sacrifice' was not a sacrifice at all. The Persian man's words rang in my ears: Erik was keeping us below to protect us, …protect from situations like the one now set before me. I'd been prepared to argue that we needed to move back into the world for our child; I suddenly wasn't so sure. Not if the world could cause such damage and not care.

But…the more minutes passed, the more I began to realize that as much as I now cursed the world, I might just need it. An avenue of solace and aid. I was fortunate that for all my past mistakes, I had one potential source of help.

I didn't want to leave Erik, but I feared I had no choice. I was no doctor; he needed a doctor. So bundling my body in a thick, dark cloak with a hope of blending in with twilight's shadows, I raced into the labyrinth maze beneath the opera house and took a path I hadn't dared travel in months.

How bizarre to exit into fresh air and the noise of the city and find every familiar detail unchanged. I was the changed one, gazing out through altered eyes and finding the world a stranger.

My guard was raised, every corner scanned for threat or enemy. Sense insisted that I could go on my way without fault. No one would recognize me as the former opera diva, not without high notes pouring from my lips, but still, I eyed every single body on the city streets as an enemy. Some of my supposed fellow human beings had brutalized my husband as if they were savage animals without an iota of pity in their hearts. I could very well be sharing the sidewalk with his attacker and never know it. It hurt to be oblivious.

Trying to retain focus, I ignored the inherent welcome from moon and stars and gave only one thought to the warm summer breeze, recalling a snow blanket the last time I'd seen the grass. Time had spun so far forward in my absence, and yet I never mourned a single lost breath of fresh air. It was further proof; I was indeed a changed woman.

Onward, and I grew impatient and hasty, imagining Erik waking hurt and alone and terrified I was gone for good. What if he began to fantasize as I had and envisioned me full of lies and escaping with an unending hatred for him and our unborn child… Dear God, I prayed he was confident in the love I'd spent six months desperate to prove.

It was that fear that ignited guilt in my gut as I halted before a familiar door and knocked. My avenue of aid was half a betrayal to my marriage, but…I had no other choice.

A maid opened the door, scanning me with mistrust, but it was in my favor that I found no recognition in her. She must have been new to the post, never attaching the title of 'former fiancée' to me as I fought to stand regal and stoic and pretend it hadn't been six months since I'd been among people.

"I need to see the Vicomte," I declared. How awkward I felt! Was six months an ample time for one's social skills to grow rusty and tarnished in their lack of use? Because the girl looked at me with derision, judging without a word, and I suddenly remembered that I must have looked a mess: tear-swollen eyes, pale complexion, …there was even a smudge of Erik's blood on the fingertips I quickly fisted into my palm to hide.

"The Vicomte is not taking visitors at this late hour-"

"Christine…"

My name was whispered full of disbelief…and hope, and I glanced over the shoulder of the perturbed maid and met the well-known blue stare of the man I'd first spoken the word _love _to. It had been a fabrication, a wish far more than the truth, but I had verbalized the emotion and given it life between us, and it obviously still sputtered in gasps at least in the Vicomte's regard.

As soon as the maid saw her employer, she bobbed a curtsy and rushed away with one final suspicious glance in my direction. I was glad she was beyond sight before Raoul rushed to meet me at the threshold. He hadn't blinked since my arrival and caught my hand in his as if it were his right. I allowed because I wanted his understanding, not hostility.

"I…need your help," I said even before a proper greeting, too scared what he'd misconstrue between the letters.

"Anything," he replied without pause. "Say the word, and it's yours. Do you need sanctuary? An escape from Paris before _he_ pursues?"

I wasn't surprised where Raoul's mind took him, and I quickly shook my head. "No, no, Raoul. I… Erik was hurt…very badly. I…had nowhere else to go. I know you hate him, and you don't care if he lives or dies, but he's my husband now and…I can't lose him. Please… Will you help me?"

He had no obligation to concede. I knew he could turn me away without mercy; he had every right. But I also knew Raoul was a good man, and beneath every pain I myself had had a hand in inflicting, he had a good heart.

With a sigh of concession, he replied, "What would you have me do?" 

* * *

><p>An hour later, Raoul and I were escorting an uncertain doctor into the catacombs. This was the doctor who worked for only the wealthiest families in Paris, and above all, he knew discretion. One must to treat society daughters who might have gotten themselves into scandalous situations or the mistresses of titled gentlemen.<p>

I'd been this doctor's patient once before. The night of the chandelier's fall, I'd born cuts from the shatter of impact. Raoul had sent for his doctor despite the late hour of our return to his estate, and it had been understood that not a word would be uttered about the Vicomte's lady houseguest or her traumatic incident. I trusted him then as I trusted him now because the Vicomte had already waved the contents of his pocketbook before the doctor's greedy eyes, payment guaranteed upon completion.

My pace was frenzied and left the gentlemen no choice but to match it or risk becoming lost in the dark pathways. Betrayal and more betrayal. I felt the weight on my shoulders, reminding me with every step what I was doing. Erik might very well never forgive me…if he was awake to catch me bringing unwelcome guests to our home. I actually _prayed_ for his anger and aggression, anything but a comatose body in a bed. …My prayer didn't get answered.

The doctor let out a gasp the instant he saw my husband, a skeleton broken and bloodied in a bed. Perhaps he thought me mad and insisting marriage to a corpse without genuine life, but as if to prove him wrong, I rushed ahead and checked for the heartbeat that called him a liar.

"Please help him," I begged without shame and waited impatiently for the doctor to relinquish his shock and do the job he wanted to be paid for.

A long breath, and the old man was tentative in his approach, coming to Erik's side and seeking out the signs of life I already knew existed.

While the doctor took a pulse, pinching Erik's thin wrist between his fingers with a cringe that did not go unnoticed by me, Raoul came to the opposite side of the bed. Disgust, so much of it in that sacred room I'd only filled with love and desire. It was a toxic cloud hovering in the air and contaminating every pure emotion I longed for Erik to feel in his unconsciousness. The Vicomte was as transparent as the doctor, judging both Erik and myself for loving him. It was cruel, but I had to endure it.

As the doctor checked Erik with never even a flinch from his patient, he drew the covers back and uncovered the abominable words etched into Erik's skin. A look was darted at me. _RAPIST_. Maybe the doctor believed it as fact, but his opinion mattered nothing to me. _His_ didn't, but Raoul…

"Continue your examination, and do it well if you wish to be paid," the Vicomte ordered, stern and inarguable, and coming to my side, he cupped my elbow in his palm and guided me out of the room.

"I don't want to leave him," I argued, but Raoul was insistent as he steered me into the living room.

"Let the doctor do his job. I promise he will be efficient and do what he can to help your…_husband_." The word was cold and pained.

It seemed every hint of a past full of trauma had been resurrected in the appellations upon Erik's torso. I vowed to myself that once this was over, I would kiss every vile label and bloodied letter and let my love erase them from existence. All I had to do was prove them wrong and that one could not rape a woman who was eager, willing, and aching. I would make sure Erik knew the truth, beg him to make love to me…

"Christine." Raoul's concern was written in the fine lines upon his perfect face. "Are you happy here…with him?"

It seemed such a futile question, and jerking my elbow from his continued grip, I insisted, "Yes. I love him."

"Do you?" At my harsh glare, he quickly added, "He's been keeping you locked down here for _months_. Is that love? Because it sounds like imprisonment, more obsession and manipulation on his part."

"I am no prisoner," I vowed. "Did I not just prove it? _I_ came to see _you_."

"Yes, and I've done all you asked that last night we were together. I was discreet and careful and made certain _no one_ knew the Opera Ghost lived or that you lived with him. I thought I was doing the right thing, but now…" Raoul's indecision was plain on his face. Another man protecting me from the big, bad world, but the big, bad world had crept inside anyway.

"It _was_ the right thing," I argued with a convicted nod, "and I am grateful. Everyone believes I left with you that night. It kept us from the questions and others venturing down here to destroy our life. This…was an accident. He was attacked…"

"And what if you had been with him?" he demanded. "I'm not sure what is worse: him locking you in this hell or taking you about the city on his arm at the risk of abuse and injury. Christine… Perhaps this is a sign-"

"Sign? This was an _accident_," I reiterated, casting an anxious glance down the hall to Erik's open doorway. "He would _never_ put me in such a situation. In truth… This is _my_ fault. If he hadn't been distracted, he would have taken greater care. He's never taken unaware."

"Never?" Raoul scoffed doubtfully. "He is no god, Christine. He is a man, and men are fallible. He can't be untouchable forever. This is bound to happen again if you stay here-"

"Then we'll go," I concluded as if an obvious solution. "This _won't_ happen again. It can't. I can't lose him, Raoul. …I'm pregnant."

I wasn't using the information to solidify my tie to my husband; it was grand news I longed to confide to a friend, and for all our wayward situations, Raoul was still just that.

It was foolish of me to expect a favorable reception, but I never considered sadness an option. And yet that was the predominant emotion on the Vicomte's face. "I once dreamed what it would feel like to hear you say such words to me, only…in my dreams, you carried _my_ child."

My palm pressed protectively over the place my baby rested. "Raoul-"

"It said 'rapist' on his body," Raoul accused the point I considered mute. "I kept your secret, but it seems the secrets are out. They've made their assumptions. How much truth is in them?"

"None," I vowed, holding his worried gaze without sway. "Erik is no rapist. He…was bringing a cradle for our child, and as you say, they _assumed_. Don't you dare do the same."

I would have continued my assessment, but the doctor somberly stepped into the room, his solemn demeanor pricking my nerves.

"Madame," he softly began, "I tended to the injuries that could be treated. He has a few bruised ribs, swelling along the abdomen. He's lucky that I cannot find evidence of internal damage. His injuries will heal in time, but his head wound…"

My terror built against my chest until I felt I would burst, and I anxiously demanded, "What are you hesitant to say, doctor? He's unconscious…"

"And there is a chance he may stay that way," the doctor answered in a heavy sigh. "Head wounds are a tricky sort to diagnose. I've seen patients never awaken, pass away quietly from their unconscious state."

I shook my head in frantic disbelief. No, …he was _breathing_, had a heartbeat. I refused to believe such details were inconsequential and I'd lose him without a fight.

The doctor went on, calm and steady, "I've also seen patients awaken and be dramatically changed. As I said, head injuries are tricky. He could be an entirely different person upon awaking…_if_ he awakens."

Every route seemed dire and horrible, and I felt those telling tears streaming down my cheeks without my permission again as I urgently bid, "But he could be _fine_. Isn't that so? He could awaken as if none of this ever happened."

My hope was speaking for me, half-extinguished, but it blossomed to gain his tentative nod. "Yes, of course that is always a possibility, but… Madame, he's been unconscious for quite awhile now. I…want you to prepare for the worst."

I pressed my sob into my sleeve, hating that all eyes were on me and watching me fall apart.

"Christine," Raoul breathed miserably, and when he pulled me into a comforting embrace, I was too numb to deny him. I _knew_ in my right mind that he cared _nothing_ for Erik's plight; his compassion was for me and only me, but…I hurt so much and caring of any sort felt nice.

I fell apart for one blissful minute, and then I drew away and decided, "Let me take you both back up. I don't want Erik to wake up and find you here…"

Denial. Sense dubbed it, but I didn't listen. I played the part and led my guests out of the dark. I could feel Raoul's eyes always on me, but I refused to acknowledge him until we were outside in the alley and the doctor was gone, payment in pocket, on his way home with a promise to fetch him again if need be. I trusted the doctor's compassion more than Raoul's, maybe because for all his assessments and examinations, he'd spoken not a single word about Erik's face. It felt like he shared out secret and had courage enough to still offer aid.

Raoul lingered and caught my hands in his. "Listen to me. I will not let you rot away underground alone. If he…if he doesn't wake up, Christine, my door is open to you…and your child. Promise me that you will seek me out if the time comes-"

"I already have a husband, Raoul," I felt inclined to insist in a rush of anger and saw his immediate swell of rejection. It was so reminiscent of the last time I'd seen him and shattered his heart to bits.

"I am not propositioning you as a substitute husband; I am offering as a _friend_. Christine… If he dies, you will be alone with a child."

I _hated_ his words and their sheer blatancy, but I let my tears speak for me and ducked back into the shadows, disappearing from a world that was squashing my every innocent hope. My God, why didn't Raoul understand? I _needed_ hope. I was _nothing_ without its sustaining taste. Hope was my addiction, as much a fickle friend as happily ever after, but I clung to its willowy limbs and rushed back into the underground, desperate to feed its flames and fantasize more happy endings. 

* * *

><p><em>Courage had never been my strong point. For too long in my life I'd let everyone else guide my path and steer my direction, scared to cause unstoppable ripples in the pond. As such, when Erik had instructed me to leave with Raoul, I'd obeyed. Another direction, another trail I'd been placed upon and expected to travel. But…following its designated walkway would have been the suicide of my soul. <em>I_ changed my direction, and it landed me back beneath the catacombs on Erik's doorstep._

_ Courage was the knock I gave to that half-hidden door, and courage was denouncing the fact that it had received no answer and entering the house anyway._

_ The moment I stepped into that sacred space, I felt the uneasiness in the air. It was static on my skin, tingling electric currents through my veins and insisting without proof that something was wrong._

_ Oh God… I ran through a corridor, deeper into the house, desperate to find what remained of my angel. He couldn't be broken. No, not when I knew I could fix him._

_ I burst into the music room, half-terrified I'd find it empty and abandoned, but an angel with shattered wings was seated in the chaos of random notation. Score pages were strewn everywhere along the carpet, torn from their librettos and homeless, interspersed with other pages. It was a mess, and my angel was collecting the shards together again, lifting one page and then another, muttering incomprehensibly beneath his breath. He was mask-less and exposed, and yet he never acknowledged my presence, engrossed in a task too large for anyone._

_ Within the minute of my arrival, he gave up on a paper in his hand and abruptly ripped it in two and then four. The shrill sound echoed the room and made me waver in my resolve._

_ "Erik…," I called before courage fled completely._

_ Mismatched eyes darted up in a mixture of surprise and horror as he dropped the serrated remnants of a score page and smoothed his disheveled hair with his shaking hands._

_ "Chr…Christine," he stuttered, rebuilding a fractured pretense as if it had never faltered. "What are you doing here?" His question picked up arrogance where it had been left off, and a scowl smeared ugly on that disfigured face. "I distinctly recall sending you off to embraces and happy endings with your hero, and yet here you are, eager to play another round of exploitation with my pathetic heart. Go away, ignorant child. I am through with your selfishness. Your Vicomte may deal with it now."_

_ This was the arrogant bravado of his makeshift alter ego. The Opera Ghost, a persona I abhorred because it was not real. Still, his words struck a biting chord within me. For as cruel as they were, they held a modicum of truth._

_ "I will not be selfish ever again," I replied, fighting to keep a brave posture._

_ "Oh? Am I to believe that? You, the girl child who has barely made a step into womanhood?" He posed his doubts and regarded me with a bitterness I could not blame him for. "Forgive my unwillingness to trust your flimsy words. I've been their victim before."_

_ "I know," I replied miserably. "Words mean nothing to you, not even a choice to stay. I _chose you_; I spoke the words, but you saw lies."_

_ "I know you too well," he concluded with a huff as he anxiously rushed to the other side of the room and collected more random pages in hands I saw trembling. "Will lies be your weapon of choice tonight? More deceptions to keep me as your devoted supplicant in the dark?"_

_ "I don't want a supplicant," I insisted and prayed he saw my honesty. "Not a ghost or an angel, not even a teacher, not anymore."_

_ "Then what do you want of me, my dear? For I am at a loss of what else I can give you."_

_ "_Love_," I breathed the word and saw it rattle him even as he refused to meet my eyes, focusing on the paper rustling between his quivering fingers._

_ "I am no fool," he retorted with a snap. "Love I offered. Love you rejected at every turn until I made it the solitary choice at your feet. _Love_, Christine? You don't know what _love_ means; you confuse its design with infatuation and write yourself fairytales by that definition. Love… My version of love is not sugarcoated nonsense and frivolity, the tokens money can buy in a pretty world of fancy titles and riches. But neither is my love another round of idolization and worshipping you on a pedestal. I thought I made that clear the last time you stood in my presence, when I dangled a vulnerable heart before you and watched you chip at its ventricles. You didn't know love _then_, and I'm unconvinced you know it _now_."_

_ The child in me longed to cower and believe him; it doubted what I was so certain existed in my heart. But no… If I chose a coward's path now, I knew that was all I'd ever be. Happiness was never simply handed to a person who wanted its brilliance; it had to be earned and fought for. Love was certainly the same._

_ "I want love," I repeated, fisting my hands beneath the cuffs of my sleeves so he wouldn't see their trembles and learn their weakness. "I want your version of it."_

_ "You're _scared_ of my version of it," he accused, a blue eye and a green eye piercing me in his blame._

_ "Teach me not to be." It seemed a feasible offer, but he shook his head. "Teach me what your love feels like…"_

_ "You said you don't want a teacher, and I want no student. I want a lover, a wife, forever, Christine." He paused as if desperate to decipher me. "Tell me you can give me that, and I will write us a happy ending. Christine…" Hope was as vulnerable as love. "You said you want love."_

_ He still held sheet music between his hands. Music, suddenly the barrier between us instead of our binding thread, and I had to rip it down to get to his heart. My knees wobbled with my steps as I closed the gap between us, holding his urgent gaze in mine. As my fingers reached and grasped the note-speckled line in the violin part, I felt him release his own grip on the page, and I took it and let go, hearing its flight to the floor._

_ A kiss had tiptoed the edge of adulthood the last time we'd tried this, when I'd chosen Erik and saved Raoul. This time I was determined to _leap_ heart-first and not care. No regrets, I stared at that disfigured face, so like a skeleton corpse and yet so _alive_ and anticipating what I had to give, and I leaned near and set my mouth to the misshapen contours of his and _kissed_ love flush on the lips._

And they lived happily ever after… 

* * *

><p>I drifted in and out of memory as I lay with my cheek pressed to Erik's constant heartbeat. It was hypnotic in its steady pulsation, lulling me toward sleep even as I fought against its full possession. I wanted to stay awake in case a change caused a tremor in my world, and the nearest I got to sleep's respite that night was the dream in recollection.<p>

It was supposed to have been the start of our fairytale ending. Erik had promised it, and I'd naively believed he held such control to guarantee a forever of bliss. Part of me longed to tell him he'd misjudged his power, but the other part wondered what libretto played in his unconscious state. Maybe _he_ still lived the happily ever after, never realizing it was an injury-induced illusion, and I…I was the only one between us suffering. It was duly deserved after all; I'd been the one to squander so many minutes we could have had together and now… If I'd only known happy endings had a time limit and expiration date, I'd have gripped them a little tighter and given them an earlier start. Why was retrospect so clear and unburdened by the hesitations the present always seemed to hold?

Day passed and then another night while I watched my husband so close yet so far from me. Oh God, would he truly never wake up? Was I watching him _die_ without even realizing it? My eyes ran over the abnormal features of his face, ignoring the newly added bruises and wounds in favor of memory. I let myself have the fantasy and remembered the splay of emotion I'd watched spread over that face time and time again. I'd learned what desire looked like and a passionate hunger so powerful that I quaked to my core every time I was its victim. I'd learned to see love unfold like a sunrise and light every detail of that face in its glow. I'd learned happiness and joy and excitement for a future we'd share and call _ours_.

Every one of those emotions had altered my views of beauty. _He_ was _beautiful_ when in the grips of such feelings. He, who I had once denounced because my eyes had placed their judgment first. My eyes were shallow, one pointless feature; now they were connected deep and anchored to my heart, and they had a new, greater purpose. My eyes looked through my heart's veil of love, and the skeleton resting on the bed was so very attractive, so very wanted, so very needed, so very _loved_. _I_ had changed, and dear God, I was terrified to lose my reason for existing and change back, to stop _feeling_ as I did in this house with this man and his love. He was _everything_.

My soul was cumbersome to bear and worse yet was every thought of the baby, newly created in my belly. It needed its father as much as its mother. I couldn't do this alone…

The baby was the reason I left Erik's side and forced myself to the kitchen for something to eat. It went without enjoyment when food tasted as bland as cardboard in my mouth. I didn't feel hunger and likely would have continued on without a single meal, but the baby… My God, was I torturing my forming child because I could not see clearly behind my internal pain?

I didn't eat much, enough to feel stronger in my stance as I wearily headed back to our bedroom, anticipating the comatose corpse in our bed. I was as much a corpse, dead inside, a ghost haunting our home. Dead…and then alive.

Lash-less eyelids were lifted, and a blue and green iris stared, pensive and bleary at the canopy of the bed. I held my breath until I saw him blink, and then a sob fled my lips as I raced to him. I did not hesitate, perching on the edge of the mattress and burying my tears against his chest.

"Erik, Erik," I whimpered, fisting my fingers in the covers on either side of his frail, bruised body. "I thought you were gone, that you'd left me… Oh God…"

I couldn't stop the tears as they seemed to bleed from a gash in my heart, but they tasted of salty relief. I _ignorantly_ believed this was the second the nightmare was over.

His voice was hoarse and tight from a lack of use, but to my absolute horror, he snapped despite his weakness, "Will you kindly collect yourself and let go of me? Such tears and dramatics! Are you disappointed that I live when surely my _death_ has been the prayer on your lips?"

His words didn't make sense. I drew back to meet the harsh glare fixed upon me with a rush of fear. "What…what do you mean? Your…death?"

"Ah, I found you out," he declared, haughty and cold. "Your tears are a decent pretense, but they shimmer in _lies_."

"Erik-"

"_Stop_ speaking my name," he commanded. "I don't know who told you what it is, but _no one_ calls me by name. How dare you utter its letters?" His hand emerged from the covers, and as I stared at him, absolutely dumbfounded and befuddled, he moaned with the effort of that meager action and returned my compassion.

"Don't…don't move too much," I bid, sounding weak beneath my continued unease. "You were hurt-"

"Yes, I can tell that much," he sharply retorted, and his hand shook with a violence that revealed his pains as he dared to touch his bruised face. "Where is my mask?" The question was harshly shouted at me, and I staggered in my seat beside him to bear such fury from the man I loved.

"I…I don't know. I suppose it was lost in the attack, but…you never wear the mask when it is just the two of us, not anymore."

His hand dropped in mid-air as his focus was again on me, and it was so cold that I shuddered. "And who are you exactly? I have yet to be granted a formal introduction to the woman sobbing over me and wishing for my death."

"Chr…Christine," I muttered, staring back with wide eyes, but my husband, my Erik was nowhere to be found. I looked into eyes I knew every hue of, every flicker of color and shape, and I did not know who looked back at me. "Don't you…know me?"

"Obviously not, but from where I sit, you are an intruder without cause to be in my home. …Unless, of course, _you_ were the one to disable me in hopes my death would have benefits. I'm sure you realize the Opera Ghost is wealthy…"

"Opera Ghost…" Oh yes, I suddenly recognized the façade before me. It was the very role I'd dismantled. I _abhorred_ the Opera Ghost because it was every bad part of Erik's history put on like a costume and used to torture anyone he saw as a potential oppressor. Opera Ghost…

The doctor had warned that head injuries could have consequences to behavior, and yet I'd never considered my husband would regress to a place I'd barely reached him once before or that he'd forget all about me…

"Erik-"

"I told you not to speak my name! What right have you to say its letters?" The exertion of yelling and anger made him moan again and grip a hand about a torso I knew had bruised ribs.

"I'm…your wife," I whispered in disbelief that he could forget such a pertinent fact.

I saw the news shake him, and yet I glimpsed no acceptance. "You? My _wife_?" he scoffed. His doubt was a strike to my already sore heart. "That's preposterous-"

His anger broke off to a fit of coughs, and every seeming bit of strength revealed its true weakness. He wasn't strong. He was hurting and in pain, much more than he obviously wanted me to realize, but as my heart swelled with love and concern and I tried to reach for him, he flinched and shot me a deadly glower.

"_Don't touch me_," he hissed, quiet and yet powerful.

"I'm sorry. Just let me-"

"_No_. Leave me be. Get out of my room."

His orders were laden in his true pain, and although I longed to argue, my hesitation made him grab my shoulder and shove. I stumbled off the edge of the mattress, shocked that he'd laid such a cruel hand upon me. Never before had he dared.

Tears choked my voice, but I weakly conceded, "All right, I'll go. Just…rest and maybe you'll feel better."

His mismatched eyes were narrowed spitefully on mine as I backed toward the doorway, half-afraid a wild animal would pounce, defending itself despite its injuries.

The second I was out of his sight, I burrowed a sob in my palm, pressing my back to the wall just outside our bedroom door.

Oh God… What had just happened? I'd been so desperate for my husband to return to consciousness, to live on, but I'd never once considered that he'd awaken as a character in a different play than I was cast in.

He didn't know me. He'd looked at me as if I were an enemy and hated adversary. Where was love? Why was it gone? It vanished, and I was suddenly _terrified_ I'd never find it again.


	3. Chapter 3

Happy November! Halloween was cold and SNOWING here! My goodness, I am not ready for winter yet! Anyway, I hope you all got fabulous treats and had a spooky day!

* * *

><p>I spent the rest of the night curled on the couch, sleeping in fitful nightmares that were never worse than the one I awoke to. My heart had fractures running through it like cracks one violent act from shattering, and I carried its wounded shell in slippery fingers. One push, and I knew I'd drop it.<p>

I readied for the day in my old, now unused bedroom, finding a suitable gown in the wardrobe and listening every moment for sounds of stirring in the next room. A part of me hoped Erik would wake up and all would be fine, that rest was all it would take to heal the gaps in his mind and mend their torn places. It was a feasible idea and kept me moving forward. Hope, …such a bitter lie.

Dressed and attempting a feeble smile, I dared to peek into Erik's bedroom, …_our_ bedroom. How it hurt to regress even that most minor detail.

He was asleep…or unconscious again. The vision alone of his unmoving, disfigured face returned my fears to the surface, and on silent feet, I crept to his bedside, desperate for proof of his life. The day before I'd been able to lay upon his heartbeat and think I was wanted there; today I was afraid and settled for reaching a trembling hand toward his exposed nostrils, eager for the brush of his breath.

His exhalation was grazing my knuckle when to my shock and gasp, his hands suddenly darted out from the covers and grabbed me. Pinching my shoulders tight, he dragged me to the mattress and held me down, leaning with a fiery glare over me. His breathing was loud and erratic, his body shaking from the effort and pain, and yet even in his injured state, he was strong enough to keep me in place as I stared, wide-eyed and anxious at the Opera Ghost's sneering face.

Neither of us moved for a long, uneasy moment where the only sounds were inconsistent breaths. I ached so desperately because my husband would have looked at me with tenderness and _love_ in his eyes, but the Opera Ghost…he only looked with hostile cruelty. A hurting heart searched for any flicker of real emotion, even just the briefest wisp to hang hope upon, but…I found nothing.

"Erik," I tried again with my own love scripted so blatant on my face. "_Ange_, please."

"Angel?" he demanded in a whisper, and for one second, I thought I'd triggered a memory. But hope was so masochistic. "A wife would know how far from that title I am. You wish to claim yourself my wife, but you know nothing of the demon in your bed."

"You're wrong," I insisted, risking his temper with my attempt. "I know _everything_, and I love you still."

"Love," he spat the word, leaning further over me until his torso pressed into mine. "Such a saccharine _lie_. _Love_ isn't real, not in this vile disgrace of a world. Love is the term men use to make their lust acceptable."

I shook a doubtful head, my curls growing disheveled against the blankets. "_You_ love _me_," I asserted without a single doubt.

"I _desire_ you," he protested, and mismatched eyes raked over me with that fervent longing I could still taste on the back of my tongue. My body reacted to the vision of it, recognizing _Erik_ with no care for the details in between. "You're beautiful," he continued, but as one of his points, not a sweet notion. "It's unsurprising that any man would lust after you. If I spoke _love_ and married you with its syllable on my lips, it was certainly to be permitted into your bed."

I refused to put any credence to his claims, assuring a heart that wept inside. This was _not_ my husband speaking; this was his vicious alter ego and its lifelong scars. I had broken the veneer before, but…it had happened without intention. In truth, I didn't know _how_ I'd done it, save by loving him and letting him love me. But this was a man who _didn't want to_ love me.

He was still pressing me into the mattress, his thin torso heavy with undisclosed weakness as he played his part. He wanted to seem the one with the power and not the victim, but I read his expression deep enough to glimpse pain.

"Erik, please," I begged with my soul's desperation. "Do you truly look at me and feel _nothing_ in your heart? _You love me_," I insisted it again and prayed it made a dent in his armor.

His disfigured features softened a bit in their continued scrutiny, his eyes in their vividly blaring hues searching mine, fierce and unblinking. I showed _love_ and tenderness and wondered if I would gain even an iota back.

I never had the chance to learn if I'd moved him. A deafening knock resounded from the front door, and with an anxious gasp, I broke free of his loosened hold and scampered to my feet. His true condition showed through as he fell sickly back to his pillow, panting for a stable breath beneath uncontrollable grunts of pain.

"R…rest," I stammered, my authority as feeble as his body. "I…I'll just answer the door and return."

Erik never replied. I didn't think he could find real coherency behind his pain as he squeezed swollen eyelids shut and grimaced against its waves. I hurt with him. What torture to watch the one you love suffer and be granted no means to ease them!

I lingered a second more until another knock had me running to reply. I already had an idea who our guest would be. The Vicomte could never have found his way down to the house alone, so that left one option.

As expected, the Persian man nodded a welcome the instant I opened the door. "Madame… Are you all right?"

My anxiety was obviously exposed more than I had thought. To see compassion even from such an unpredicted place brought my tears to the surface, and I fought a sob to form an answer.

"Erik…he's awake, but…he doesn't know who I am. He doesn't remember."

The Persian pondered my admission a breath before bidding, "May I see him?"

I nodded without thought and led the way. As we entered the bedroom, I found Erik perched upright among the pillows without even a hint of the pain I knew he suffered.

"Ah, daroga," he gushed, and I froze in my steps. "How nice to see a familiar face!"

The Persian granted me a sympathetic look before approaching Erik's bedside. "So you _do_ remember me, old friend?"

"Of course! Do I look a fool to you?"

"No, but Christine-"

"My self-proclaimed _wife_ is confused and addled in her perceptions of the world. I am just _fine_ and will be on my feet and back to my usual activities soon enough."

I watched Erik in a mixture of hurt and horror to realize _I_ was the only part of his life he seemed to have forgotten. I…the woman he'd claimed over and over again had taught him what living was all about…

"You truly have no memory of Christine?" the Persian man asked, gesturing in my direction. "She _is_ your wife."

"So she has told me, and _why_, I have yet to surmise." His glare found me, and I shrank a step closer to the doorway. "Wives are supposed to obey their husbands. Isn't that so? Then leave us, little wife. I do not need you wallowing at my bedside while I have a congenial discussion with an old friend."

Dismissed like a servant, and through a sheen of tears, I nodded a hollow head and escaped. I did not go far. No, I hovered just beyond the doorframe and listened to every word spoken.

"You shouldn't be so cold to her," the Persian was saying. "She's your wife, Erik. You may not recall it at the moment, but you _love_ her."

"You all wish to instruct me in what I'm supposed to feel," Erik spat. "_Love_… If I love her, why doesn't my heart remember her? Forget the head and its flights of fantasy. There should be at least a spark in my heart, or so your emotional logic would argue. I feel _nothing_."

His revelation was a punch to the gut, and in its aftermath, I pressed my palm to my developing baby and prayed it never heard a single word and never ached as I did at that moment.

"Erik," the Persian huffed, "you may not remember it, but you were once ready to move heaven and earth for her love in return. You loved her to obsession and back."

"Love or lust, daroga?" he inquired. "She's just a girl, a pretty one albeit, but I see nothing special enough for such dramatics. You forget who I am. I don't _love_. I don't _believe in_ love, and lust… I am not typically a lustful creature, but as I said, she is pretty. I can see how I might have made the mistake and cast lust as love to bed her."

"Erik…" I heard the Persian sigh and knew he was seeking the point to argue first. I lost hope that he'd do me any good. "You have just endured a traumatic accident; it is not the time to make rash assumptions when you cannot remember the past _years_ since you entered her life. People change, and I daresay from what I saw, you _loved_ her. You were ready to give up everything, even your music, to keep her."

Silence, and I prayed Erik was contemplating his friend's assessment. But his next words cut deep. "You judge things I said and did, but you cannot judge my thoughts or the so-called feelings of my heart. I refuse to believe I loved that girl. I don't _love_, daroga, and she…she is just a girl."

It was as much an insult as when he'd dubbed me a child over and over again. I knew how far I'd come from days of believing in angels and fairytale stories, but he was deciphering me from the present, not the past. Perhaps I had not grown up as much as I'd thought. And he…he didn't love me anymore.

The Persian hesitated to speak again before finally confiding in soft tones, "I can't force you to love her, but by all means, you must try to get along with her and find some modicum of respectful understanding. You're married, …and there is a child."

I felt the blood drain from my face and pale me to a ghostly white to hear him give my secret away. This was certainly _not_ how I wanted the news revealed.

"Child?" Erik scoffed. "I have seen no hint of a child."

"A baby on the way. You were so happy with the idea, and now it is a reality. Christine is pregnant."

"By _my_ doing?" he posed, and his doubt was another punch to the gut. "And now I _know_ I lied to you all and must have been playing an elaborate ruse. You say I was _happy_ at such news? How could I possibly find joy in a baby's arrival? If it is indeed mine, it is destined to be a little monster. Do you truly believe I could ever want such a thing?"

"Erik-"

"It is practical fact, daroga," he snapped. "I am a freak of nature. Any child I had a part in conceiving will be a freak of nature as well, and that girl… Well, she has earned at least one emotion from me: _pity_."

I cried silently into my palm. Pity… I'd pitied the Opera Ghost once and knew how one-sided that emotion was. Pity wasn't even as warm as compassion. It was distance and looking down upon another. Erik pitied me…

I listened to no more, aching to my innermost core as I curled on the couch and waited for the Persian man to end his visit. By the time he joined me in the living room, my tears were dry on my cheeks and I was able to adopt a decent façade that hid my true anguish and never confided how much of their conversation I'd overheard.

"Give it time," the foreigner bid with a forced smile that I saw through. "It was a trauma, but certainly, his memory will return once he's healed. And for now…just be patient with him, Madame."

"I know how to handle the Opera Ghost," I confided, "but I don't know how to destroy him again. What if this is all there is? What if I must spend the rest of my life married to a stranger I _hate_ and never find the man I love again? I know _he_ is inside, hiding somewhere in a monster's guise, but…what if I can never touch his heart again?"

Compassion was rooted in the Persian's stare as he came alongside me and sat on the couch. "I have no guarantees for you, Madame, not even half a promise to bind your hope to, but I do know this: Erik loves you. It may take him time to find it again, but I have faith. Love will find a way through."

He stayed with me a bit longer, sitting in a comfortable silence as I stared at the fireplace and mused upon his words. I wanted to believe in them, but the task seemed daunting and impossible when Erik couldn't look and see me as anything but a girl. He loved me once, and love made me special and wanted, so far above any ordinary woman, so much so that he'd been desperate to win my affections. A man who no longer cared seemed a much harder heart to crack into. What if I never succeeded? Could I spend my life living half a love story and loving for us both?

* * *

><p><em> "Oh God…"<em>

_ "Come for me, Christine. I want to watch you…"_

_ My body was vibrating with sensation from the top of my head to my toes as I gazed down at Erik's fervent features. He lay flat on the mattress, his hands delicately clasping my hips yet never guiding my motion as I rode him. He loved to watch me, perhaps even more than the act itself. He loved knowing I was overcome and bursting with desire for him, his ravaged face, his scarred body. And I never denied him a single view of my passion, unable to be selfish with feelings he inspired._

_ I arched my back above him, and taking it as temptation, his hands lifted and cupped my breasts, his fingers pinching my nipples and make me cry out louder. Almost there… Had pleasure ever felt as imperative as it did at that moment rocking above my husband's bare body?_

_ "Erik," I whimpered his name, cherishing every letter as one last thrust sent me into oblivion. Ecstasy in brilliant light started at the spot our bodies were joined and coursed through my limbs. It shook me like an earthquake, and in its aftermath, I felt my muscles liquefy and drop me until my torso was flush to his. My curls were tangled like a spider's intricate web as they tumbled forward and blanketed his pale skin._

_ Moaning his approval, he kissed my temple, hard and claiming, and finally took over the motion, catching my hips again and moving me with intent. It was savage and violent, and I clung to his shoulders and let him pull me along his tide, shivering at the pinpricks of pleasure every thrust sparked. I was a willing slave to his vehemence._

_ Within the moment, he was moaning deeper and louder, muttering my name as the only word he could comprehend. I adored every second, kissing his collarbone and setting my tongue free to lap at the starting point of a scar. Every one needed to be treated with care and love, _so much_ love._

_ His peak was a fervent cry, guttural and primal in its inception, as his fingertips dug tautly into my hipbones and made grooves in their distinct shapes. "Christine, Christine, you drive me mad…"_

_ Within the second of release, he was fire and caresses all over again, pushing the curtain of curls from my neck and burrowing heated kisses against its column. I shuddered and writhed restlessly atop him, mewing my unquenchable need. It was like a craving that never found complete satisfaction, a state of constant starvation that only paused in that vibrant burst of pleasure. And…it was such a well of _feeling_. I'd never known anything like it before._

_ "Christine," he breathed against my ear, "I want to stay like this, one with you forever. Imagine it, never to separate and know that empty aching again… Such bliss."_

_ As if to encourage his idea, I nipped the tender flesh between neck and shoulder with my teeth and made him gasp and then moan, "How I adore the fire in you!"_

_ "You are its match, _ange_," I replied, surprised by the throaty timbre of my voice. Well, of course when the past hours had meant few words and mainly moans and cries… I was shocked not to receive a chastising from my ever-vigilant teacher and a speech on proper vocal care, and unable to stop my grin, I added, "You strike the fuse and make it explode."_

_ "Should I say that the fuse was always there, or did I myself lay its groundwork?" he bid, nuzzling my hairline with his misshapen mouth. "I believe you've _always_ been a passionate creature, Christine, but I may have tarnished your innocence and made you crave the darkness a bit too much."_

_ "Is that a bad thing?" I teased and lifted my head to admire his smile. He always smiled when I was in a playful mood, and how I adored its beautiful curves on such an unorthodox canvas._

_ "Not bad. It possesses me to insanity to realize _I _am your desire's muse, that I am the only one you hunger so fiercely for. My God, Christine, I fantasized this so often, but I never truly believed fantasies could breathe."_

_ I sighed as I stretched contently upon him, setting my cheek to his chest and fixating on the vision of my curls coiling on his skin. They streamed about his body and stirred with each of our breaths, and I concentrated on the slight rustle I felt with his exhalation and the sheer sweetness of my breasts flattened to his torso._

_ "Did you fantasize _this_ moment, _ange_?" I inquired softly. "Exactly this one? Where I am lying atop you, joined to your body and so delightfully euphoric? This is too romantic to be speaking of tarnishing darkness."_

_ "_This_ is the perfect balance of both," he corrected. "My desire for you is a dark hunger in my veins, but love makes it something awe-inspiring. …When I first desired you, it was all dark and flame. I was so sure you'd _never_ desire me back, and any attempt on my part would be a punishment to you."_

_ "Punishment?" I spoke a heavy word lightly, but I could feel the radiating dread in his admission, smiles fading to solemn frowns._

_ "Desire shouldn't be a punishment, but I would have made it one if that was the only way I could have you. …I am a bad man, Christine, not nearly as noble as you wish to believe. I once thought of forcing my love and my desire upon you."_

_ I lifted my head and yet never made a move to disentangle our bodies as I delicately caressed his skeleton-like face. "And now that you know force is unnecessary and I want you of my own free will and longing?"_

_ Leaning into my touching fingers, he breathed, "Now I fantasize making you shout your surrender and scream my name in your ecstasy."_

_ I smiled my unending adoration, still tracing his features as his hands splayed flat against my back and ran up and down my spine, molding us closer. "I love you," I whispered, kissing his cheek and then the place where a nose should have been designed._

_ "I love you, too…"_

* * *

><p>I was jolted back to awareness and found to my dismay that I'd slept the afternoon away on the couch. It was now well into the evening, and I was reminded that I had yet to begin cooking supper. With a patient to take care of and a growing baby in my womb, I knew I had to get something started on the stove, and with a stretching of stiff limbs, I forced my mind to the task.<p>

No thoughts, no fantasies, no more memories in the form of dreams. I didn't want to consider such blissful moments that might never come again. But… Dreaming was half a necessity when reality called forth Erik's suddenly adamant stance on love and desire. My subconscious dubbed his new views as lies. I _knew_ Erik's true emotions and ideals; I _knew_ Erik _could _and _did_ love. It was currently locked away in a vault, and to reach it, I needed a key, …a key I was desperate to find.

Once I organized myself enough to start supper and get a soup rolling on the stove, I decided that I needed to capture bravery from its hook of un-use and check on my husband.

I was afraid I'd find him asleep again and one wrong move from attack when no noise came from our room. But after a long pause to steady my nerves, I apprehensively peeked in the doorway, …and I felt the breath flee my lungs.

Erik was not in his bed. No, he stood, unsteady and weak, in front of the vanity mirror. It was a new object in such dismal quarters, for Erik had never kept even a small one in the room. For me, he had allowed it and hadn't seemed to care about its presence…until now.

His body was bared from the waist up, every ugly bruise shrieking its pain across his pale flesh, but his gaze had a fixed spot. As I tried to interpret where, his hand lifted and fingers grazed the scabbed revelation of _MONSTER_ across his heartbeat.

Monster… My husband looked at his beaten and broken body in the mirror and saw _MONSTER_, and tears rose to choke my throat. _MONSTER_ and then_ DEMON_ and _MURDERER_. Each received a solemn touch before his hand halted in midair and froze petrified inches from _RAPIST_.

My tear-filled eyes sought his disfigured face in the mirror's reflective surface, and for one instant, I saw the pain I felt for him exposed at its source. It hurt: the words, the consequences, and the emotions he preferred to bury in an Opera Ghost's guise. And _RAPIST_… Perhaps he thought it proved his point.

I didn't want to startle him with my observing presence, terrified for more hostility, so I tiptoed back wary steps and made a louder ruckus before I ever arrived at the door's threshold. Unsurprisingly, he was awkwardly jerking a shirt over his injuries and displaying pain in meager cringes when his eyes darted to my appearance. I noted how violently his hands shook and purposely held material over the term _RAPIST_ while the others were exposed until he could pull the shirt in place.

Instinct wanted to help, but I couldn't get his hissed 'Don't touch me' out of my head. Fisting hands at my sides, I lingered back and waited for him to speak first.

Once the shirt was buttoned over derogatory insults, he cleared his throat as if necessity and muttered, "The daroga insisted I shouldn't be so cold to you when you have done nothing to deserve animosity. You are my _wife_. I may not be able to reason it, but the fact remains."

If he sought to seem less cold, he either did not understand the word or was mocking the idea because there was only distance in his pretense. Before I could devise a suitable reply, he made the chasm between us bottomless as he hobbled to his armoire and drew forth from its cabinet a new mask. Never even a glance in my direction, he covered his deformity with its protective encasement and only looked at me again from behind its insurmountable wall.

A mask… How dauntless a challenge had it been for me to rid him of it for good months before? And now here it was again, taunting me in its manmade construction. I hated that mask almost as much as the Opera Ghost persona that went with it.

"You don't need to wear that around me," I tried to argue, already knowing I'd lose.

"It is for _both_ our piece of mind, I assure you."

"You've gone without it for months," I countered. "I prefer to see your face."

He studied me skeptically, and it was a further source of annoyance to me to have to interpret his emotions with that infernal mask in the way again. The task was more difficult than I remembered.

"_No one prefers_ to see my face," Erik retorted with a flicker of the Opera Ghost temper I still recalled in my nightmares. "Perhaps my former self derived some modicum of pleasure from knowing you looked upon such a heinous vision and did not cower. Perhaps it was a spark of arousal. Did I always bed you without the mask on and force you to look at such ugliness while I took you? What you will most certainly call _love_, I call vulgarity."

He was slandering our love story so completely and sparking a shame I did not want to know. "You…devalue love so easily, but love makes me look at you through my heart's eyes. I love your face."

"You _tolerate_ it," he corrected, "because I've trained you to. A caged nightingale will adapt to its circumstances when given no other options. Here you are, my bird, locked away from the light and other, more pleasing images. I abolished your disgust for my abhorrent details by granting you no place else to look. It was an intelligent scheme."

The Opera Ghost in all his cunning might, and I did not know if a winning protest existed against such a shrewd ability to deduce situations and reinterpret them in his favor.

Before I found a plausible path, he demanded, "Tell me, wife. The first time you saw my face, were you indeed disgusted? And do not sugarcoat the truth and build me a fairytale where _love_ made you see beauty in your first glimpse."

Our sordid past… I wanted to lie because it didn't matter anymore, but he had me trapped in his narrowed glare with nowhere to run from my own mistakes. "Disgust is irrelevant now-"

"But _then_?" Erik snapped sharply. "The _first_ instant my face was bared to you, were you disgusted by it?"

"I…was young and naïve, and-"

"_Were you_?" His shout made me jump in startled surprise and raise defenseless arms with a fear he'd attack and strangle the answer from my lips.

"Yes, but that isn't important anymore-"

His chuckle was cruel and grating and erupted my nerves in goose bumps along my skin. "Not important to _you_ perhaps. How could it be when you are doing your penance daily by allowing me to stay mask-less in your presence? It seems to me that I've never forgiven you for your disgust if I must make you prove yourself over and over again with every glimpse of me."

"No, no…" None of that was true, but he had such a masterful way of turning my words upside down and spiraling them around. I didn't see a clear path to honesty through his conjured fog. "I…love your face. I desire it-"

"I've _conditioned_ you to desire it," he interrupted with a matter-of-fact haughtiness that I wanted to scream against. "Women do not desire monsters, Christine; if they do of their own free will, then they are as perverse and damned as the monster himself. You prove my point. You did not desire me or _love_, as you claim, at first glimpse. Instinct gave you your sense of disgust for a reason, and I manipulated it out of you." Gesturing idly to the mirror, he added, "Positive reinforcement perhaps. Praise and trinkets for acquiescence and subservience. Find a decent argument to prove me wrong. I've cut you off from your world, filled your ears with lies, married you to keep you in my bed, and trained you to permit my every whim. I doubt it took a beating to open my eyes to the truth; I've likely known it all along but didn't care, not if I had what I wanted. So keep spouting _love_, dear wife, but from my perspective, love is not the impetus for this life together."

I quaked on my feet as I listened to him shred every facet of our love story, and it hurt because his words made sense and might have left scars if I weren't so sure in what I felt.

Erik turned away from my dumbfounded exasperation, but as he dug deeper in his armoire and found a suit jacket, putting his persona back together, he concluded, "This might be your second chance. You have been duped and exploited, _raped_ by my desires. Maybe this is _your_ awakening to the truth."

And then I understood. "That's what you're afraid of, isn't it?" I softly posed in my epiphany. "You're _afraid_ you played a game and manipulated me into marriage and desire and love. Beneath your Opera Ghost role, you're truly scared you're that much of a monster…" _MONSTER, DEMON, MURDERER, RAPIST_… "Putting on the mask isn't about me or a disgust I once ignorantly held; it's about your shame for your own flaws. You're _ashamed_ of yourself and the sins you're convinced you've acted on me."

I was doubtless in my assumption and equally doubtless stating it would rouse the temper I knew better than to play with. This Erik did not love me, and this Erik killed those who crossed him without a thought. Love had been my shield against his inherent violence; what would protect me now?

My eyes widened as his hands lifted in the air and slowly clawed into fists. "Stupid girl," he hissed. "You don't know who you toy with. Lust may have kept me docile toward you, but I will not fall to its power again. I fear _nothing_, certainly not your assessment of my character. And shame," he laughed viciously, "I know _no_ shame for what I am. You may continue your gullible path, but my eyes have been opened. You are a _child_, and I have taken your innocence as I fed your illusions. You _don't_ love me, Christine; you are ignorant."

I was able to ignore the sting of his remarks because I knew I'd hit the mark. My husband was terrified he was indeed the rapist and monster they'd called him and that he'd forced me into our marriage. I adored that truth because it meant beneath every word he spoke against love, he _cared_.

Squaring my shoulders, I acted unfazed and simply stated, calm and even, "I _do_ love you, and you love me. I intend to prove it, but for now, I will settle with a ceasefire and supper. Will you join me in the dining room, or do you wish me to bring our meal in here?"

He obviously took a change in subject as his victory, and I took it as my own when he went along with it. "Supper, fine. We can eat in the dining room. I am not an invalid. And then…then I must go out."

"Out?" I posed skeptically. "You can't possibly. You can barely move without pain, and-"

"I will not have my decisions chastised. A good wife does not argue with her husband's demands." As he spoke, he added a tie to his _costume_ and straightened his posture as if daring me to find fault.

"Erik… But why must you go out?" I knew I sounded like a whining child, petulant over an un-favored situation, but I'd been hoping for time to be on my side, to begin a bridge between us and start to solder its structure. Obviously, he felt no obligation to keep my company.

"If my well-being is your concern, it needn't be. I _will not_ be a victim again," he asserted with adamancy, as much for himself as for me. "And if you worry I shall go and not return to a wife I hold little loyalty to, you are equally mistaken. …The daroga told me there will be a child." His solemn somberness over the news wasn't a surprise, but it hurt anyway as he concluded, "You may count _that_ as my loyalty. I may be a monster, but if I've ignorantly sown my seed, so to say, and spawned another little monster, I will not punish you and leave you to raise it on your own."

My baby, a monster and the link between us… He'd once adored our potential little monster and every hope in our life to come. Now he was tolerating me just as he claimed I tolerated his face, and was I to dub my child a blessing for being the reason my husband did not run out and leave me alone forever when half his deduction came with the belief that our child would be a monster?

I let it go for the moment simply because it hurt so much, and without another word, I abandoned him to check on supper. It was a valid excuse to hide rising tears. By the time he joined me in the dining room, hobbling in every step and making me wonder how he could consider wandering the catacombs, my emotions were back beneath my control and not so transparent.

Supper was a disaster. It was so very reminiscent of a year ago when I'd walked the narrow line of his temper with my heels stirring sparks practically in every step. But back then, though his anger and ability to lash out had been true obstacles between us, underneath it all had been a desperate longing for my affections. Now he didn't care and made no effort to be congenial or at least civil.

Eating with his mask on was a situation I knew he struggled with, but he never gave even a hint of his perturbation and acted so superior to me as he manipulated the smallest of bites. His leering gaze was always on me as if antagonizing and pressing me to find fault with his unorthodox attempts. He seemed to _want_ a fight, coaxing me to light the fuse, but I knew better and stayed silent and pensive on my own bowl, only occasionally meeting his glare.

Awkward would have meant unease on both sides; this was a one-sided battle of wills that I refused to play.

When our silent supper ended, he gave me no chance to protest his activities of choice. He rose from the table, and before I could note his absence, he was gone with nothing but the click of the front door to announce his departure. No farewell, no assurances, and certainly no kiss goodbye with that dastardly mask molded to his face and poisoning his heart against me. I was left alone with my anxiety and memories still too fresh from his last foray into the world.

…Was it wrong to indulge a brief fantasy of him falling and hitting his head just hard enough to start his heart again and put its beats back in their normal pattern?

* * *

><p>Hours passed, and I was waiting for his return. I hadn't ventured into the land of panic and pessimism yet, and why? Because I actually had more faith in the Opera Ghost than even in my husband. I might have hated his veneer, but it was all about survival and remaining on guard; he had no pesky flittings of <em>love<em> to distract him.

As evening grew into night and waiting became stale, I restlessly wandered to Erik's piano and began to strike random pitches. I hadn't sung in days, not since my adoring husband had sat before the keys as my angel accompanist. Practicing on my own felt like I was missing half my voice, but I knew it was necessary.

Just a girl, Erik had dubbed me to his Persian friend, but music had been our spark once, the initial force between us. He had let music speak love for him when all other avenues had failed. I wondered if music could be my guiding star as well. If there was any way to make my husband fall in love with me again, it had roots in music.

My voice had been the anchor to his heartbeat, but days of sobbing and tension meant long patient minutes of rebuilding my technique and flexibility. It was a fabrication that singers opened their mouths and perfection immediately came out. No, perfect sound was the pinnacle of aligning every other detail. Posture, breath support, resonance. My time spent under Erik's tutelage had taught me how to fix myself and ready my voice for singing, and I called upon my knowledge now and broke my voice free of the solid sculpt it was stuck in. I eased it back to where it was supposed to be, and then I started to sing through the arias we had been working on in my last lesson.

I didn't think twice about my chosen repertoire, not until a sharp gasp shattered my legato line and had me darting wide eyes to the doorway. The Opera Ghost stood there, watching and gaping at me; that mask made shock seem one of the most vicious emotions in existence.

"Erik… What's wrong, _ange_?"

I had a fear he was in pain, over-exerted from whatever excursion he'd taken, but as I stepped closer in approach, he stumbled back and lifted violently shaking hands that I halted to observe. I could not stop my fear of those hands because he'd pushed me away and touched me with violence at his awakening. I couldn't seem to let that go, not with a new maternal instinct to keep guarded for the baby's sake.

"That piece…that…" He muttered broken words, and I quickly patched them together. The aria I'd been singing… I hadn't considered that perhaps it wasn't one to currently put sound to, but it was too late to regret the choice.

"It's…yours," I offered, meek in my need to appease.

"That melody has only been playing in my head," he insisted, paled in his bewilderment. "Not even paper has met its notes. …How do you know it?"

He obviously took it as a betrayal, glaring suddenly cold at my wide-eyed expression, and I hastily replied, "_You_ taught it to me. It's from your opera. …You like when I sing it for you."

"My opera," he muttered onward, fisting those still-shaking hands. "My opera was a travesty. I _destroyed_ the sanctity of music because of _you_."

Swallowing hard, I nervously asked, "Do you remember it, _ange_?"

Oh God… All I could think was maybe I was getting him back, and hope choked the back of my throat.

"You keep calling me _angel_," Erik said, and I felt hope slowly shattering like glass beneath my feet. I practically heard the sound, fracturing shards in their fragile music as I broke with them. "I am _no_ angel, but you believed I was once. Isn't that so, Christine? You hung your dreams on a fantasy that _I_ built for you, and you cling to fantasies still. It's obvious every time you call a monster an _angel_ instead."

"You…_don't_ remember," I concluded in desolation. "But…how do you know such things then? Is that what you went off to do? To learn the details and discredit the love you won't believe in with a list of our tragedies?"

"It was my right to know," he retorted in a snap. "Asking you the details would have meant listening to another fairytale. You are stuck in your child dreams and don't see reality through their haze, but I needed the truth. You keep spouting _love_ over and over as if it should mean something when I have words written all over my body that call you a liar."

Biting my lip to rein in a rush of tears, I staggered a step back as if struck and clutched the piano's smooth top in my need to stay upright. "Those words… They're vile insults; they're not true."

"Murderer?" he countered, heaving the term like a weapon. "I _am_ a murderer _and_ a monster. I know their validity for a fact. _Demon_ may be a stretch, for I have yet to see hell. I suppose I'll learn if it is applicable when my damned soul reaches its gate. And _rapist_… I had no credit for its case. A baby, a wife with her head in the clouds. I needed to know, Christine."

"You are no rapist," I stated, flat and inarguable. "What could the world possibly tell you when _I_ am the only one who knows that truth?"

Anger was the prevalent emotion pulsing his stoic stance, but…I felt wisps of sadness in the backdrop. Good God, why wouldn't he believe me?

"I learned our story, Christine," he confided, shaking his head somberly. "Its culmination was chiseled in blaring letters on the newspaper's front page six months back. It wasn't impossible to find out the details. My opera, the chaos, the tragedy, and then the nightmare I built for you…and your lover."

"He was _not_ my lover."

"_Fiancé _then," Erik snapped, and his fury grazed my skin in its lashing. "The Vicomte de Chagny… Of course after reading the newspaper's story and its adamant ending that insisted the diva Christine Daaé was unharmed and safely with her Vicomte, I decided to seek him out and ask why then _I_ have a wife in my home. You see, I was convinced that I must have kidnapped you, carried you off, tricked you into a sham of a love story."

I abruptly shook my head, hating such ridiculous assumptions. Every word made me a victim. "No, no, _I chose_ you, Erik. I returned to you because I love you and I always have."

Chuckling bitterly, he strode closer to the hearth, and I watched the weakness in his body as it told me he had most certainly over-exerted himself. He should have been off his feet, resting and recovering, but he'd obviously seen his task as imperative, …an imperative task to discredit his own wife.

"You always loved me?" he mocked cruelly. "The Vicomte had a more realistic spin to your words. He was quite surprised by my appearance in his study and more so when he realized I had no memory of him or a rivalry we supposedly shared. I trust him more than you because he hates me still and wasn't shy to let me know it."

I was already imagining how a conversation with the Vicomte had gone. It was clear from our last meeting that Raoul still loved me. Carrying that pain in his heart meant his words would be laced in it, and memories still bitter must sound like horrors.

"The Vicomte told me _everything_, Christine: how I entered your life as your angel teacher and manipulated you to care for me, the terror I put you through once you knew who I really was, and how desperate I was to have you. You wish to insist love. _What love_? I only see obsession and a twisted game that left you dependent on me…and the music. I _exploited_ the music for you. How dare I?"

I couldn't keep the tears from streaming down my cheeks, feeling their cool yet stinging descent and their tumble from my jaw as I declared in retaliation, "You have your facts and their blatant colors to verify your fears, but you don't have the letters carved in my heart. _Yes_, I fell in love with an angel, but beneath the lie, there was so much truth. Your manipulation let me perceive you as a heart and a soul, not the sum of your past sins or your deficiencies. I loved the essence of you, and even when everything else made me doubt and run, the love I already felt never dimmed. I learned to love you within your lies, but I don't regret it. Erik… None of it matters now."

"Doesn't it? Your Vicomte would disagree. He still holds the claim that you loved _him, _…and I'm not so sure you shouldn't. He seems a good man. If our source of tension was a battle over your affection, it doesn't exist at present and makes me wonder where your loyalties should lie."

He spoke with an apathy that annoyed me, and I bid without sway, "_You_ are my husband."

"You married a man who no longer seems to exist. Doesn't that make our union null and void? …All I did to have _you_ at my side and in my bed, and _why_? I have yet to derive an answer. I even gave you the melodies coating my brain…" He shook a baffled head and made it clear the music meant so much more than even a marriage vow. "I want no wife. …And this baby that supposedly exists…"

"It _does_ exist," I argued with a fervency I wished to God he would share. Even if he could not feel it for me, he should at least know it for the baby. It was innocent of every crime he and I had committed against each other. Our baby didn't deserve its father's disregard and blame.

"I cannot determine what I cannot see," Erik replied matter-of-factly. "And I see no proof. That means if it does indeed exist, it's yet early on, early enough to do something about it."

"What…what do you mean?" I felt myself pale as horror hit with a sickening thud.

"There are ways to remedy the situation." He stated the news as if it were common sense, not a single feeling attached, and I pressed a protective hand over my belly as he approached in slow, calculated steps. "You look at me with such fear, and something in my gut says I've suffered that look before. Fear, Christine… You were afraid of me once, weren't you? Tell me, little wife. Did you _fear_ your husband back when disgust ruled and you shared dreams with the Vicomte? Were you afraid of me, the monster in the dark?"

"I was afraid of the Opera Ghost," I admitted.

"I _am_ the Opera Ghost."

"No," I protested and refused to back away even as he came nearer. "You were _never_ the Opera Ghost. It was always a façade, and you use it now to hide your heart behind. But I _know_ that heart and the soul attached to it. Even if you can't remember _my_ soul, I know every facet of yours."

"Do you?" Erik posed skeptically as he hovered mere inches from me and regarded me as if I were naïve and ignorant again. "And in my soul of souls, since you know it so well, do I have the potential to harm an unborn child? If I am the same _soul_ beneath my guise, you should not be afraid of what I am capable of, and yet you are shaking, dear wife."

I couldn't stop the quaking down every limb because I glimpsed malevolence in a place I'd never seen it before. Maybe loving me had wiped it away, but now, it was dark and evil like an infection in the soul I so adored.

"Erik, stop this," I pleaded.

"Do you not understand that I am offering you a means of escape?" he asked and made it seem that I should be grateful. "I called this a second chance, and it could be if you are wise. You are a prisoner down here, Christine, chained to a husband who should not have a wife. A baby locks the door for all eternity. If it is as much a monster as its father, you will suffocate in the darkness. I could rid you of it all and script you a happy ending."

I wanted to shout at him that he'd made that offer before, scripted me a happy ending, but it was _with him_. For six months, we'd lived it together. Why was it gone?

"The Vicomte would take you back," Erik continued with his supposed happily ever after scenario. "You'd have no obligation keeping you here, and you could marry him without contest from me. Christine, don't you see that I'm trying to make amends? I've _destroyed_ you in every possible way, bent your will and your freedom until it convinced you that you _wanted_ a life in the dark with me. You fragile little thing. It was probably so easy to persuade you that _this_ was your fairytale ending."

Fragile… I was letting him demean my character and belittle every ounce of courage I'd grown, but it was so difficult to face the Opera Ghost risen from his grave and fight for a love that did not seem to exist. Unreciprocated… He'd fought for me that way once, believing I'd never love him back, but he'd won because he'd been wrong. I wasn't so lucky when I had yet to glimpse emotions in the Opera Ghost's heart. I was the only one struggling to keep our love intact, and I could feel myself being defeated without my say so.

If love meant nothing to him, I knew what did and what ploy to play…because the Opera Ghost was a possessive creature…

Gazing at his masked face, I offered with a huff, "The Vicomte _is_ a good man, and he loves me despite all the pain I've put him through. You're right; he _would_ take me back if I went to him. …He would take _your_ wife and make her _his_." I saw my bluntness rattle him ever so slightly, enough to push me onward. "And he would kiss lips that bear _your_ cells on their surface and touch a body covered in _your_ fingerprints. Is that really what you want, Erik? Do you want the Vicomte to take me to _his_ bed when I have only ever been _yours_?"

I did not speak of love or hearts, choosing the imagery I wanted with care and watching as I hit my mark. I was only half-surprised when he suddenly grabbed me by the forearms and pulled me closer to his body, piercing me with his heated gaze.

"You're right," he conceded. "You are mine, and the thought of another man's hands upon you makes my blood boil. Perhaps I'll never love you again, but as you said, my fingers have been all over your body and stained it in my cells. You are _mine_," he repeated, and I gave a small nod, encouraging what I actually wanted most. "And the child in your womb also belongs to me whether either of us wants it or not. You _chose_ this life; well then, you shall rot in the darkness for the rest of your days. You may consider it your punishment, dear wife, for a poor decision to marry a monster."

With that, he released me so abruptly that I swayed on my feet. My body cried for the loss, yearning just to _feel_ him, no matter that I currently hated every word on his lips and every unfair cruelty in his heart. I wanted my husband, and it was a further sting when he simply stalked back to his room, feigning more strength than I knew he had.

I kept the pieces together until I heard his door slam. Then I slid into a puddle on the floor and wept.


	4. Chapter 4

Hello, all! This is the second to last post for this story; the final post will be up on Sunday. Also, next week, _Manifestations of a Phantom's Soul, The Untold Darkness_ will be available. This particular collection is full of my darker tales, 11 un-posted stories and 5 previously posted. More information is on my Facebook author page. :)

* * *

><p>I was living with an enemy. There was no less severe way to put it. My once adoring husband seemed to abhor my very existence, and I was now breathing with a hole in my heart that ached upon every exhalation. I missed my Erik and cried myself to sleep every night when my arms reached for his shape and met empty sheets beside me.<p>

We were at opposite corners and miles apart. I had taken to using my old bedroom in the house again. It was a place where I had once hid from the Opera Ghost, months and months ago when he had been teacher and I'd been his fear-fringed pupil, too scared to love what I _most_ loved. So much in between, and I was not the same girl-child. I was stronger and braver and yet denied what I yearned for as it continued to slide out of my grasp.

In the week to come, I saw Erik's wounds healing. _He_ was allowed to heal; why was I only permitted to suffer onward? He made no effort to rekindle a love only I seemed to mourn. In fact, he stayed away most minutes of the day. He'd called our relationship my _punishment_, and it seemed he wanted to be certain I agreed with the epithet.

Alone in our happy ending with so many seconds to dwell and be tortured, and on top of it all, pregnancy suddenly struck hard and added a further weight to my shoulders. I'd been a fool to put its condition in the background of an uncaring husband, and in retaliation, my body became my greater opponent. It fluctuated back and forth between a state of exhaustion and the queasy waves of nausea. The mere thought of food turned my stomach, and sitting at the table in one of the only times during the day that I had Erik's attention was a challenge and battle I was desperate to win.

I tried not eating at all when in his presence, sitting beside him and moving my meal about my plate without a real bite, but the scent was as damning as the taste and left my head spinning above my churning stomach. More than once that week, I had to rush from the room and vomit, and these were times I refused to return to the table, terrified I'd receive a scolding speech from the Opera Ghost and a harsh reminder that he'd offered to end pregnancy at its start.

I was truly so convinced I'd find no compassion in a plight I was now facing on my own that it was a shock when after running from the table one evening, a knock came to my bedroom door. Supper was a forgotten trauma in the bathroom, and I was curled on the mattress, fully-clothed and crying over my inability to win a battle with my own stomach. The knock left me to gasp and sit up straight, swiping tears away with the backs of my hands as the door opened.

That masked face was laden in _pity_. Not caring, not compassion. No, he looked at me still from his haughty pedestal as if he could not drop to my level and feel _with_ me instead.

"This is becoming a frequent occurrence with you," he stated, and I had the urge to strike his masked face. "Are you ill, or is it the child?"

He spoke of our baby apathetically, as if it were on par with the chicken on our dinner table, and I placed a protective hand over its nonexistent shape, praying _my_ love was felt. "It's not the baby's fault; it's part of pregnancy."

"Then it _is_ the baby's fault," he corrected. "I can't reason suffering such ills for a creature that is nothing but a leech sucking the life out of you."

"All right," I concluded, abrupt and hasty when I didn't think I could handle more cruel slander heaved on my defenseless baby. "Then leave me to suffer alone, and return to your supper."

Erik actually seemed taken aback by my sharpness, and with a modicum of sincerity, he stunned me in his reply. "I've grown accustomed to your company at the table. Every time you've abandoned me sick this week, I've left the table and stopped eating." I took an iota of hope from his admission even as he seemed to reinstate his arrogant temperament and added, "A wife's place is at the table with her husband, and as you've so diligently argued that you are my wife and belong to me, I am not in favor of what this baby is taking from my possession."

"Neither am I," I concurred as that infernal hope rooted in my core. "But it will pass."

"Until the little monster breathes its first breath and follows it with incessant screeching. Christine," he sighed my name, and even if he said 'monster', it was not with anger attached this time so I let it go. "I am going out to get you some mint leaves, and when I return, I will brew you a cup of tea. The mint will help soothe your stomach, and then maybe I can finish my meal."

I almost smiled because compassion was in that gesture, whether he saw it or not. Curling back on the bed, I held his eye until he disappeared through the doorframe. Hope and hope yet. No, love was not in mint leaves or a cup of tea to settle my stomach, but it was a start and the first spark of something more than a tolerance for my presence in his home.

I clutched every detail with greedy fingers, searching the scene over and over in my mind for extra clues, even just a flicker of emotion in those mismatched eyes to feed my addiction for hope. Perhaps I would have stayed lost in my thoughts until Erik's return, but a flustered knock at the front door jerked me forward again.

The last time someone had appeared at the door while I was alone, I'd been given a beaten, broken husband and a changed ending to my story. And so I was on edge, rushing to the door with shaking knees and a catch in my breath.

"Raoul! What in the world are you doing here? How did you even find the way down?"

The words tumbled out faster than my thoughts as the Vicomte strode into the house and closed the door abruptly behind him as if in fear the hounds of hell were on his heels.

"Christine! Thank God, you're all right!" he gushed, and without a second's pause, he pulled me into a hug. I allowed it for one bewildered instant before I twisted free and glared at him.

"Of course I'm all right! How did you get here? Erik has traps all over the catacombs…" My mind sparked a fear that my own husband had set up this meeting in another attempt to rid himself of an unwanted wife, and though I insisted it couldn't be true, I knew relief with the Vicomte's answer.

"The Persian. He brought me here once before if you'll recall, and this time… I told him I feared for your safety." He explained it without remorse as if I should not blame him for appearing on my doorstep unannounced and obviously with intent to save me from my own hero.

"Raoul… I'm fine, truly. You have no reason to be here."

"No reason? I've been _sick_ with worry ever since the night your husband came to see me and made it clear he had no idea who I was or what wounds we've caused each other."

Sick with worry… I wanted to pose that sick with _pregnancy_ was far worse, and one would not lose one's supper worrying over another man's wife, but I bit back a retort and instead insisted, "Erik hasn't been himself since his attack, but…he's getting better."

"Oh? And has he remembered our past then? Me? _You_?"

I hesitated to reply, considering a lie, but the Vicomte took my pause as the truth and sighed, "Oh, Christine… Perhaps it's for the best. Perhaps…this is _God's_ way of setting things to right."

I shook my head and narrowed my eyes on him in doubt. "_God_ did not beat my husband nearly to death."

"I didn't mean it that way. I just meant… Christine, I still love you, and you are now married to a man who doesn't. …Did you know he asked me if I'd take you back? That night he came to see me he asked me if I loved you, and when I said I did, he said you _deserved_ a man who loved you. I thought… Well, I thought I'd find you at my door soon after."

He was as much an addict to hope as I was, even though _both_ our plights seemed hope_less_. "I'm not leaving Erik, Raoul," I told him without doubt. "I love him, and the baby will-"

"He doesn't care about you or the baby!" Raoul pushed in an exasperated shout. "This path you are on is _madness_, Christine, and pain. You shouldn't have to endure the rest of your days suffering in the dark with a man who won't care when I…I could love you with my whole heart and soul and fill the voids this tragedy leaves behind."

As he spoke, desperation softened to longing, and he lifted his hands and held my face between them. As much as I didn't love Raoul, it felt so wonderful to be _touched_ when Erik had kept me at arm's length for days.

"Last time I was here, I left you with an offer to come to me if you were alone," Raoul softly bid. "You're just as alone now as with a husband in a coma. He doesn't want you, but _I do_. I always have. Let me love you and your baby as my own, Christine. Please be mine…"

"_Yours_, Monsieur Vicomte? But that is _my_ wife and _my_ child who you proposition so conceitedly. How dare you enter my home like a thief in the night and presume it your right to steal my possessions away?"

I hadn't heard the door open and neither had the Vicomte because we both faced it with guilty bodies and stepped slowly away from each other.

"Possessions?" Raoul taunted. "That is all they are to you, aren't they? Things you own?"

In spite of memory's gaps in between, it was so like a scene from our sordid past. The three of us in a tug of war, but this time I wasn't the rope. I had a definite side, and I pulled it as I scooted closer to Erik's rigid stance.

"It's _fact_, pure and simple," Erik retorted. "This is _my_ wife by legal and binding law, and _my_ child in her womb. If you would care to argue, I say again that the _law_ is on _my_ side, not yours."

"Erik," I tried to pacify, delicately touching his arm. "It's all right. I-"

"_You_," he turned furiously to me, "insist over and over again that you _love_ me, and yet I find you listening to the Vicomte's tales of heartfelt acclamations and permitting his _touch_. Let's not forget that _my_ fingerprints are the ones on your skin, and now you are tainted in _his_."

My persuasion and appeal to his possessive side was now my undoing, and the gentle hand I had on his arm was grabbed in his fist and used to drag me firmly to his side. I couldn't keep a gasp of my surprise from escaping, and Raoul took it as telltale fright.

"Let go of her!" he shouted, taking a menacing step closer. "She is not a _thing_, Monsieur. She is a woman with a heart and a soul that you are damaging beyond repair."

"Good, then let her be as damaged as I am, and perhaps you won't want her anymore. Perhaps you'll stop _loving_ her when she is not perfection. How it must sting your ego to know she _chose me_, she _loves me_, and won't ever want _you_!"

This wasn't how I wanted things between us. We were all back at odds without a genuine heartbeat to bring light to the dark. "Stop this _please_," I begged, setting my free hand on his gripping fist, but they both ignored me in favor of a vendetta only one of them actually knew about.

"She _doesn't_ love _you_!" the Vicomte yelled back. "She loves the man she married, and that is no longer _you_. She doesn't care about _you_; she wants a forgotten memory. And once she realizes it's gone, _I _will be the one to help her love again and give her the happy ending she deserves."

Revelation and fantasy, but the Vicomte charged out of our home with those parting words and ripped apart the fragile bridge between Erik and me because of all the truth he'd stirred to the surface. Did I hope Erik would suddenly remember me and love me again? Yes. Did I love the man I'd married who was most decidedly _not_ the man at my side? Yes. These were the questions I'd been half-avoiding as I'd adapted to my current situation. Now there was no running from their answers.

"Erik, please," I muttered, still caressing a hand that was so taut it was crushing my knuckles in its grasp.

"I heard an alarm going off on my way above," he said distantly, refusing to meet my eye. "And I was _afraid_ for you…and the baby. I imagined an intruder, attacking, stealing you away, torturing you because of my sins. …I don't remember the love you say was real, but that thought _hurt_ me."

Hope… I felt his admission fan the flame inside me as he continued sharply, "And then I opened the door to the Vicomte begging _my _wife to be _his_. His hands were on your face, touching skin that no other man should touch…"

Those fevered eyes darted to me and shook me as violently as a blow, and his hand released mine only so his palms could clasp my face between them in the same pose the Vicomte had dared.

"You're mine, mine, mine," he insisted through a clenched jaw. "_I_ should be touching you this way. …My God is your skin soft! I don't remember the texture against my flesh. I don't remember if I've touched you this way before. …I don't remember loving you or wanting you with the fervor I feel at this moment!"

My breath caught in my lungs, the ache radiating my body as well. I recognized _his_ skin, _his_ voice, _his_ aching and mirrored it back with my own. No matter what Raoul had tried to claim, this was my husband, and I loved him so much that my heart bled inside.

"Erik…" It was half a pleading for more.

"Did the Vicomte feel such lust when he held your face and learned your skin?"

The question was not one I wanted to consider. No more Vicomte. I wanted it to be only Erik and me, and I _prayed_ that if he surrendered to the wanting, he might feel _something_ deeper inside of it.

"I must wonder such things," he continued, and the hands on my cheeks pressed more firmly against my skin, his fingertips extending along my hairline. "He has no right to desire _my wife_. You are so beautiful, Christine, so sensual, …and my rage _burns_ in my veins to consider him seeing you the same. Does he imagine you in his bed? How dare he when you belong in mine?"

That possessive jealousy had frightened me in days when I hadn't known how to react to it. But once I'd grown brave enough to love him with equaled fervor, I'd adored such a trait. I was his world; if he was possessive over me, it was half with a fear of losing me, and knowing that, I did not shy away from his jealousy now. I gazed at him with desire-clouded eyes and encouraged him onward.

"I don't want the Vicomte or his hands upon me. I want yours, _only_ yours."

He moaned at my words, and I shivered at that so missed sound. It was intoxicating and spoke his passion, blatant and true.

"Do you love me, Christine?"

He asked it, and I was so surprised to hear it that my wanting dissipated to clarity and honesty. "Yes, so much, Erik."

"_Me_? Not the husband you married, but the man before you right now." He never gave me the chance to find a suitable reply. He released me, dragging his hands away from my craving skin and fisting them in the air as he answered for me, "You don't. You can't. Your Vicomte was right in his asinine assumption. You love a forgotten memory. I am _not_ that man, and what happens when I can never be him again and your hope crumbles to dust?"

I didn't know what to say. I just stared at that masked face, _hoping_ still and damning myself further with its masochism.

Erik held my eye one second more before heading to the door. "I will return shortly. Open the door for no one."

"You're not going to kill Raoul, are you?" I didn't love the Vicomte, but I couldn't let him die either. His death would have been _my_ guilty crime to bear.

"Not tonight," he replied with never even a look at me. "But I am setting traps for any rats in my maze. Should he come wandering again, I will feel no remorse when he meets his end."

That was all. He abandoned me, and all flickers of heart and soul went with him. Jealousy, possessiveness, longing, desire: I had those feelings from the Opera Ghost. But love was still a question mark. Maybe I could earn it, but he'd made a valid argument. Would my own love in return be for my husband or the Opera Ghost when they no longer seemed to be one and the same?

* * *

><p>I went to bed that night before Erik arrived home, and the next day, though I had clues to say he'd returned at some unknown point, he was gone again. Distance was his weapon of choice, it seemed, and I carried its inflicted wound as painfully as blood and bruise.<p>

The clock in the living room chimed a late hour, and without a hint when he'd return, I was given no choice but to abandon my vigil for bed. An entire day without his masked face, and my anxiety was a knot in my belly. Though this separation felt deliberate, I had memories of comas and injury to prevent rest from arriving.

For hours, I tossed and turned in bed, tormented again by my own mind's creations, and mercilessly, they dragged me into memory's vault and left me there to fend for myself.

* * *

><p><em>I loved to watch him play his piano. There was something so arousing about the way his fingers spanned the keys and made that beautiful instrument cry and sing. I could stay mesmerized for piece after piece, fantasizing those glorious hands playing over my skin instead and drawing forth cries of my wanting. He'd once told me every sound of desire from my lips was even <em>more_ beautiful than music…_

_ "How long will you continue to stand there with your longing so transparent on your blushing face?"_

_ My guilty eyes darted to his, but he never missed a single beat, continuing the adagio from Mozart's piano concerto number 23 with an inquisitive expression on that unmasked face. Blushes were as fevered as desire, and within the fire, I knew I must be a deepening shade of red. Had I not just been envisioning the hand caressing the upper register making similar motions between my legs?_

_ "How much longer do you intend to practice?" I countered in lieu of an answer._

_ His brows arched his intrigue and ignited a smile upon my lips. "I must at least finish the movement, lest its coda haunt my sleep tonight."_

_ "Would you rather be haunted by the un-struck notes or the wasted minutes languishing in desire for your awaiting wife?" I teased, and yet the blush remained. For all the confidence his wanting gave me, I still had modesty's veil making every provocative attempt timid instead of voracious. …Perhaps it was time to find my inner vixen, the one who screamed at her peak and clawed Erik's thin frame with urgent fingers._

_ "An impossible decision," he concluded with a chuckle, gazing at me as he continued the piece._

_ "And if I…persuaded you in my direction?" I asked, dropping my eyes coyly behind my lashes. "I could, you know…"_

_ "What…what would you do?" he breathed, and I heard that husky hint of desire in his angel's voice and savored it as much as the wide-eyed interest he fixed upon me._

_ Words were still beyond me, so coming to stand beside his piano bench, I simply reached for the clasps of my gown. My fingers shook with my brazenness, but I forced myself to stare at his face and watch the hunger overtake his disfigured features. As my gown tumbled with a whisper to the floor, I heard his breath catch in his lungs and almost grinned. …The coda would most certainly be haunting his sleep tonight, or so I concluded as I rid myself of one garment and the next, my bared skin tingling from the fire in his eyes._

_ Petticoat, chemise, pantaloons, and even when I was naked, though he was ogling my body with his obvious wanting, he _still_ played. I was suddenly adamant that I _must_ win this game. It was me versus the music. I rarely posed the battle for fear I could lose, but tonight I wanted my husband's hands on _my_ ivory surfaces and released shyness to triumph._

_ He had a page and a half left, and without time to hesitate and find apprehension, I brought my hands to my breasts and cupped them in my palms. I would have dubbed myself awkward if not for the sudden guttural moan that tore from Erik's gaping, misshapen mouth. …I adored how much I surprised him as he'd obviously never considered me so salacious._

_ The tempo accelerated, and Erik's hands flew over the keys. Only one page to go. I had to up the ante or risk losing, so pinching my eager nipple with one hand, I brought the other between my legs and slid my fingers inside._

_ That was it. With a cry, the piece halted mid-chord, and hands that had been caressing the piano keys groped for my body._

_ "Christine…" My name was his melody now, and without consideration to dissonance, he forced me back against his precious keys and didn't even cringe when a cacophony of random pitches sounded and shook the walls with their bellowing moan._

_ "You naughty little thing," he gasped, burying kisses against my throat, so ferocious that I squirmed on smooth ivory and played another mess of pitches beneath me. "That was the most arousing scene I've ever witnessed. …I am so hard and throbbing for you."_

_ Though his admission brought tremors through my limbs, I managed to murmur, "I won."_

_ "Won? You conquered and destroyed. My God, Christine!" He groaned every letter between desperate kisses to my throat, and as his hands captured my breasts, he commanded, "Keep touching yourself. Oh God, don't stop yet! I ache to see more."_

_ I no longer blushed. How could I be shy when my husband was pressing the hardness of his desire against one of my bare thighs and scratching my skin with the material of his clothing? So fervent, so desperate. I slid my fingers along the length of my wet womanhood and found the spot Erik liked to linger, knowing it made me quake and cry out. He'd taught me so much about my own desire, but this was the first time the student was surpassing the teacher and acting alone._

_ He had drawn back enough to watch me, parting my legs wider and fitting them to either side of his seat on the piano bench. One of his musician's hands began a path from my collarbone down the center of my chest, so tender and adoring._

_ "My God is your skin soft!" he gasped, and it echoed in and out of memory's vaults. "Don't stop. Make yourself explode, Christine."_

_ I shuddered at the command, losing an urgent whimper as my fingertips circled that most sensitive spot and made me wetter. I was so close. It was impossible not to fall to desire with Erik's mismatched eyes glowing their hunger upon me. He ground his manhood firmer against my leg and groaned his own need for release as he watched me find mine._

_ "Erik, …oh, _ange_," I nearly sobbed when pleasure came, knocking into me with its gratuitous wave. It resounded another ugly clash of pitches that vibrated the entire piano with their beating._

_ As my senses faded in and out of reality, he lifted his hands and cupped my face between them. "The power of a touch," he bid, the hoarseness in his voice insisting his un-cooled longing. "Do you remember the first touch you granted me? Of your own free will after the truth made me a man and not an angel?"_

_ It was difficult to form coherent thoughts in my satiated mind, but even as I considered and tried to place an answer, I was unsure. Sliding arms that felt boneless about his shoulders, I replied in whispers, "I don't remember, but how I wish I did! Will you tell me, _ange_?"_

_ His fingers grazed my hairline, his hold so delicate and loving as he answered, "It was something so random. One night after your lesson, I brought you back to your dressing room, and as you stepped through the mirror, you grabbed my arm. I knew in better judgment that it was to keep from tripping; you seemed to act without realizing it. But…I _obsessed_ over that tiny gesture. I could have sworn for days that I still felt your hand's pressure through my coat sleeve."_

_ I fought to locate the exact memory but failed. He was right; it had been an unrealized gesture, practicality, but I did not see sadness in its conception. Grinning sweetly, I told him, "I trusted you enough to know you'd never let me fall. My heart touched you even if my head was usually lining its paths in doubt."_

_ He seemed to relish my interpretation, his adoration in his stare before he made a firmer grasp against my cheeks. "And now I touch you in the most beautiful way, holding the face of an angel in my palms, and I have heart, soul, and mind remembering every instant."_

_ Leaning close, he brushed his mouth across mine, sealing such lyrical words before he heaved a sigh and decided, "And now it's body's turn. I am _aching_, Christine. May I carry you to bed and make a million more beautiful touches?"_

_ I tingled with the idea, my smile un-dimming, but I concluded, "First, I get to watch you make a million touches on your _own_ body. It's only fair."_

_ He chuckled. How I loved that sound. "Fair indeed. All right, I will touch myself while you watch, but only if you do the same in front of me and inspire my climax with your own."_

_ I acted as if I truly pondered the proposition before nodding, eager and anticipating, and I giggled as he fitted his hands beneath my backside and lifted me into his arms, moaning his delight._

* * *

><p>Music swam around my consciousness and guided me back to reality. The adagio from Mozart's piano concerto number 23… Was I still asleep and dreaming, wading through more memories? Had that haunting melody with its unfinished coda followed me to mock my sins against it? Maybe it would chase me to my death and wreak havoc in the afterlife…<p>

Random musings shattered as I realized I was indeed awake and that melody with its conjured memories was coming from the piano in the living room. Coincidence…? Or did the piece stir reminiscences for him as well?

Like a sleepwalker, I rose from my bed and stepped in hypnosis out of my room. The music wove about my body like yearning arms, embracing and pulling me closer, but it was so unsatisfying without hands to touch me and skin to caress in return. Music was Erik's mistress when it was granted all I ached for, but I'd defeated it before and knew I could again. I had to.

As I entered the room, my gaze was transfixed on his shape at the piano. Dear God, to watch his body move as it created, to _see_ the legato lines in every fluid shape…

The piece he played was meant for an entire orchestra with piano solo, but his virtuosic genius had found a way around needing others to complete the sounds. He had rebuilt it to his liking and made it a solo far beyond Mozart's original intentions. It was brilliant, and I hated it because I watched his hands on the keys and remembered breaking their paths and earning their touches as my own. I would have done anything to have that again.

Without a word to proclaim my presence, I stepped behind him, so near that my skin tingled beneath my nightdress and screamed its urgent need for touch. This was _my husband_, _mine_, and as much as he used that word to insist possession, I had the right to insist it back. Even if emotions were haywire and lost in the mist, we _still_ belonged to each other. That fact convinced me to take bravery tightly in my grip, and bending to him, I slid my aching arms about his torso, locking my hands against his lungs and feeling the tension like an electrical shock as it tautened every muscle I held.

The music faltered a chord and then continued on its path. It was as if he were proving that I had not taken victory, and even my desperate embrace could not approach the bliss of his music.

"What are you doing, Christine?" he demanded with a hint of annoyance.

I set my cheek against the rigid tendons of his back and closed my eyes, breathing him in. Why could he not let me live the fantasy for one second? "I miss you," I breathed and did not realize how deeply the words ran until tears filled my eyes. "I miss my husband, my love, the man I'm supposed to have eternity with."

He huffed his disregard and concluded, "That is not _me_. We've already established that you love a part of me that is dead and gone."

"I refuse to believe that. I _know you_, Erik. I know the heart inside the Opera Ghost's shadow. It's the _same_ heart, and it's _mine_." My fisted hands lifted to that heart's flustered beat and pressed to the spot as if I could hold the organ itself and claim it with my touch.

"You're wrong," he concluded, playing more furiously and losing the delicacy of the adagio.

"Will you tell me that you feel _nothing_?" I pushed. "As I hold you like this and feel your heart beating against me, will you say I inspire nothing within you? I _know_ that before our paths crossed and entwined together, you'd never been touched. You told me, and now I hold you in my arms, and I _know_ you _must_ feel it. You love me…"

He didn't reply, playing onward, but I was rattling his resolve as a _piano_ was executed as a _forte_ and lost a fraction of its haunting appeal.

"You love me," I repeated while the tears slid from my lashes and streaked my face. "You love me; you love me…"

"Stop this," he ordered yet never made his own motion.

"You love me," I said it again and turned my tear-stained face to kiss the line of his spine, rubbing my forehead into his suit jacket.

So sudden that I gasped and jolted, he struck both hands against the piano keys and released an ugly array of furious pitches. Their clashing dissonance split us apart, jarring my heart-felt embrace, but before I could retreat with a well of anxiousness against my sternum, he flipped about on the piano bench and grabbed me.

From the crash of piano keys in their shrieking cry to the skirmish of shuffling limbs and harsh breaths, and the Opera Ghost jerked my shaking body onto his lap, forcing me back against the keys to create more chromatic wails of protest. Memory overlapped with reality and ignited visions of passion upon those keys. Passion this time was not rooted in desire but in fury as he glared at me from behind the mask.

"Love, love, love!" he shouted, his grip bruising as he clutched me in place. "You spout that abominable word over and over again as if it means something. You ignorant girl! And I have yet to figure out whom I should feel true jealousy toward: a Vicomte with a perfect face and a longing to claim you…or _myself_, the part of me I cannot find, the one you _love_ so vehemently. I am jealous of _myself_, Christine! Because I _cannot_ love and I _cannot_ feel the way I once did. I am _not_ that man!"

I regarded the twisted rage on that masked face and softly cried as I argued, "You're afraid to love me-"

"I'm afraid to _destroy_ you!" he shouted, and I quaked in his grasp as the letters pierced through me. "The Opera Ghost destroys _everything_ he touches; don't you understand that? I _will destroy_ you. Everything good in you will perish at my hands. I _am_ the monster they call me. Why do you not see that?"

But I relished the hope I found in his imminent warnings and begged with whole heart and soul, "Destroy me then. Take all I am and shred it to pieces. Bruise me from the inside out. Just _don't_ let me go. I _love you_: the Opera Ghost, the angel, the man underneath it all. I'm _yours_."

As I spoke with more fervor than I'd ever felt in my life, I reached for that cursed mask and yanked it free. I had been letting him hide behind it. Not anymore.

His scars were just as I'd left them, and they regarded me with the aghast anger I recalled from the very first time I'd stolen his mask away and learned their atrocity. Bruises and swelling from his recent attack had lessened, not much more than lingering browns remaining. He was healing; I wanted to heal him on the inside as well, and I knew love was the magical elixir to transform every bit of damage.

Gazing at him with my heart in my eyes, I lifted my hands and cupped that malformed face in my palms. He'd called this touch _beautiful_ in my memories; he'd touched me this way the previous night. There was meaning in such a caress, and I used it, relieved simply to experience the odd textures and distortions of his features against my skin. Oh, to touch him! I felt as if I'd been aching for _days_ simply to feel him.

And he allowed me. His lids even drooped for the briefest instant as he seemed overcome.

In the most hesitant whisper, I bid words he'd spoken to me in memory, "I touch you in this most beautiful way, holding the face of an angel in my palms…"

A moan escaped the misshapen lips between my gripping hands, and I would have sworn he felt it: love, need, the true depth of emotion we shared.

But suddenly, those lash-less eyelids opened, and a wall hid the response in his heart. So abrupt that I had no chance to breathe, he grabbed my forearms and yanked my hands from his face. All fire and power, he pushed my body further back onto the piano keys, rising as he pinned my hands behind me.

"_Mine_, you said," Erik sneered, his disfigurement almost frightening when contorted in such rage. "You're _mine_. Perhaps it's time to prove it. I'd thought to spare you the agony of taking you to my bed. That is the place for husband and wife, and you are not _my_ wife. _I_ did not marry you; _I _do not even recall your existence. But you keep igniting lust, _touching_ me with your soft hands. …I _want_ you, but I don't _love_ you. Is that acceptable? May I choose your body over your heart if that is my desire? Or will you finally condemn me, _as you should_, for it?"

_I_ made the decision for him. He was leaning over me, pushing me back on the keys and clasping my hands, and ignoring every unpleasant expression on his disfigured face, I arched up and found his misshapen mouth with a kiss. I felt him stiffen, but I did not draw away, pressing as fervent as I could and moving my lips against his. I wished I had free hands to pull him to me, but even a meager struggle did not win me freedom. So all I had was my mouth, and I used it and coaxed him to kiss me back.

The lungs against me shook as a kiss overwhelmed and broke him. I knew the power I wielded, but whereas a first kiss had been given half to save the Vicomte, this one was given half to save my marriage. I refused to waver; I was more courageous than I had been that fateful night, building love where it was severed. Our first kiss had been stained in innocence; this one… I kissed him the way a well-loved woman kisses her desired husband. No hesitation, no timidity, all passionate fire. I wanted him to feel my own lust, but I had an ulterior motive because I poured _love_ over the top of every detail.

Erik moaned desperately against my lips, lowering his body to crush mine against the piano. Despite the already flattened keys, a random pitch resounded here and there with every motion of ravenous lips and squirming bodies.

I was so overcome that I yearned to cry, loving and wanting this man with every bit of myself. I was in control, but he kissed me back with equaled yearning, slipping his tongue between my lips, …as if desperate to _feel_.

So sudden that my head spun, he released me and recoiled from my presence, his stuttered breaths echoing the silence as he shook a bewildered head.

"Stop," he bid in a gasp.

"Why?" My disappointment earned me a glare, but I lifted myself from the piano keys with a few more haphazard notes and stood in adamancy. "You don't love me, but you desire me." I used his own assertion and heaved it back at him. "Then take me to your bed, Erik, and let me show you what it is to be touched and loved. Please… I know I can make you feel something."

"You already have…" He admitted it, and yet a somber desolation played on that face as his gaze roamed my features and gave hints of his un-satiated longing. "You kissed me, and…my mouth knows your lips. There was no surprise how they felt against mine, nothing to insist I hadn't done this before. …I've kissed you before, and I know it."

I nodded my eager encouragement, praying this was the awakening I'd been desperate for. "Yes, yes, Erik. Let me kiss you again and again until you remember."

But that sadness swelled with my pleading, and he admitted, "But I _don't_ remember, Christine. Not in my mind, not memories. It's an empty chasm inside." Mismatched eyes were on my lips, narrowing with an urgency to find recollection of their color. "Do you want to know where I was all day? I wandered the opera house like the ghost they call me, only I was haunting my own memories. I hoped something would trigger my mind and grant me even one feeling of nostalgia. _Anything_. I _want_ to remember you, Christine. I'm _desperate_ for it. …But I found nothing in the corridors, nothing on the stage, not a single flickered image of your face. I would have called you a liar for everything you've told me of our life together, but…my mouth knows your lips, and my tongue recognizes your taste. For the first time, I had an idea of the emotions I've lost, and my God, I want them back!"

It was a victory despite the unpleasant realities. He couldn't remember, but he finally _wanted to._ I wanted to shout for joy and insist that I'd again beaten the obstinacy of the Opera Ghost, but my elation was stripped away to observe his continued melancholy.

"Erik, it's all right. I-"

"I'm living _half_ a life, don't you understand that?" he demanded in a snap. "And I can't help but think that it's God's justice. Punish me for my crimes by taking away the one spot of absolute joy I've ever known."

God… Had the Vicomte not viewed Erik's attack the same? Pinning tragedy on religion and spinning faith in the wrong direction.

"And what about me?" I offered as a valid protest. "What am _I_ being punished for? I refuse to believe _God_ would punish _me_ for loving you. God is not as merciless as that. This was not _God's_ doing, Erik. This was the _devil's_ doing, making ignorant people into the true monsters. They hurt you without a care in their hearts. They tried to take our world away, but we can build a better one."

"Christine," he sighed my name, and I took it as an achievement when I crept close to him and he did not back away.

"Our first love story was written in tragedy and the pain we caused each other. This one doesn't have to be. Please, _ange_… Don't push me away again. Love me…"

His hands rose with a tremble, and to my whimper of relief, they cradled my face in gentleness, his eyes scanning every detail as if memorizing what he did not remember existed. "I want to kiss you again," he whispered, "and I want to _love_ you through it this time."

I couldn't find an answer in words, too near a sob of longing, but I tilted my chin upward and tempting and waited for him to succumb.

This was slow, and this was tender. His lips grazed mine, brief and testing, before forming a kiss, a puckered pressure held in place as if he needed to re-sculpt every second for himself before the next played out. He drew back, long enough for me to feel his quivering exhalation leave the gaping holes of his nostrils and tickle my skin, and then he covered my mouth again, more sure, more firm, his soft moan vibrating the surface of my lips and making my knees tremble.

Such need he always inspired within me! I was drawn into his web and entangled in my own tendrils of desire as they ensnared my willing body and held me captive. His tongue was teasing my lips apart and edging inside, and I clutched his shoulders with my shaking hands, inching nearer to his tall frame.

For all its delicacy and languidness, this was the most sensuous kiss he'd _ever_ given me. He seemed to want us both to experience every detail, every emotion ignited, and I followed his lead like his captivated student once again.

As he pulled away, his tongue licked my bottom lip, and I cried out at the residual burn that attacked my helpless body.

"I _know_ that sound!" Erik fervently declared, his hands sliding into my hair and knotting in my curls. "I can hear it in my inner ear like a favorite symphony that haunts one's drams. I've brought that sound out of you before, haven't I, Christine?"

"Many times," I revealed with the hint of a smile.

He savored the answer and bent to press his face to my temple, rubbing his scars against my skin. I met every contact and arched closer into him.

"I hear echoes," he breathed huskily above my ear. "And _my name_ so full of wanting in your voice. I _know_ what it sounds like when you scream it out at the peak of your desire… Dear God, I want to hear it now and make _new_ memories where they are gone!"

"Yes, please, Erik!" I agreed fervently, molding my torso to his and never shying away from his telltale erection. This was _my_ husband; every detail of his body belonged to me, and I was determined to reclaim them and make new imprints on their scarred surfaces.

His hands splayed wide as they raced down my back, halting in its inherent curve to guide my hips against his. I hated every layer between skin, aching to feel the smooth heat of his hardness.

As he moaned his hunger, I whispered his words back to him, "I know that sound…"

"I want you," he demanded, hoarse and inarguable.

"And love?"

"Love, love, love," he taunted as he had earlier, but this time, there was no aggression. No, he breathed the word into my ear, and I shivered with how much I wanted its letters all over my body, playing like music on my skin. "You _are_ love, Christine. Teach me what your love feels like…"

I went rigid in his embrace. Those words… I'd said them to him the night I'd returned after he'd let me leave with Raoul. Another coincidence? No, I didn't believe in coincidences anymore.

Mewing my elation, I turned my head until I found his lips with mine and made a kiss that shook me to my core. He matched my voracious need, meeting every motion and tasting me so deeply that I fisted my fingers into his jacket and clenched in urgency. Now, now, I needed him _now_.

My nightdress was torn by his fevered hands, and my undergarments quickly followed such a savage discarding. I never stopped him, savoring his urgency when he groaned to observe my bare body. It was primal and hungry, and yet there was delicacy and _love_ in the hands that reached for me.

I swallowed back tears the second he touched me. _His_ hands on my skin… I didn't want to admit it for fear of suffocating any hope I had left, but I'd been terrified never to feel this again.

Starting at the hollow of my throat, Erik explored the canvas of my body, whispering hoarsely, "I've touched you like this before. My hands know what to do even if my mind has no thoughts to draw from. I know how to make you burn…"

And he did just that, flicking his fingertips across my nipple and drawing gasps from my lungs. Mismatched eyes watched me at every breath. How I'd missed their unadulterated observation! I was half an experiment of his rampant lust, and I loved every second of it!

Eyeing me yet, he bent and captured my nipple between his misshapen lips, lapping its tip with his tongue and making my gasps into cries. His hand found my other breast, grabbing without gentleness. I didn't _want_ gentleness, not when I was so heated, and he _knew_ that.

Creating the smallest gap of space, he demanded urgently, "Am I pleasing you, Christine?"

He asked an obvious answer and never waited for me to find an intelligible reply as he took my nipple into his mouth and sucked hard.

My hand darted into his hair, clasping beneath its thin coating to the skull underneath and holding him against me. He devoured with such wild abandon, confident how to drive me mad, and as his fingers wandered between my thighs and plunged deep and abrupt into my slickened body, I shouted his name and crashed heart-first into pleasure. It surged through my body in rainbow colors and left me slack and weak in his suddenly stable embrace.

"Oh God, Christine," he murmured, rubbing lips and scars against my breast and smearing the saliva of his kisses into my skin. In my delirious recovery, I envisioned it absorbing into the thick blanket of my flesh and mingling with the blood in my veins, joining cells to cells.

"I remember this feeling," he continued, and awareness returned a bit too hastily as I desperately needed to hear his every word. "I remember pleasing you and being so content in my own skin to know _I_ can grant you such ecstasy. …I know what bliss feels like…because of you."

As his mismatched eyes fixed on my stare, the walls were gone, crumbled to their base, and I saw his soul. It was the same beaming glow he'd poured around me ever since I'd returned and begged for his love. It was another glorious detail I hadn't realized I missed and needed so much.

Another kiss was brushed across my nipple before he admitted, "You were right. I've been afraid to let myself feel and love you, Christine. I can't remember falling in love with you, and it's so _vulnerable_ and full of _trust_… I've been afraid of every baseless emotion inside of me, but you…you've continued loving me anyway."

He loved me… I'd known it all along, but it was easy to spur doubt in the arrogant veneer of the Opera Ghost. He was still afraid, but I was suddenly certain love would win me his heart again, freely bestowed and over-laden in his adoration.

"I love you," I repeated those heaven-sent words. "Make love to me, Erik. Please, I need to feel you."

I watched that skeleton-like face come alive at my request, overwhelmed and radiant as with one more kiss to my breast, he stood tall and reached for the buttons of his shirt. I sighed my eager delight, guiding the jacket from his shoulders, desperate for the body I'd been denied for so many long, torturous days. I'd been alone, and I knew that once he was inside me, completing me, in the very moment with me, I'd find the missing half of my soul once again.

As those first layers peeled away, my ever-vigilant gaze locked on the lingering evidence of the attack that had shattered our fragile world. Ah, those horrible, _horrible_ words! They were scabs on their way to breaking free. Each letter was drying up, a dozen scabbed pieces, some even missing stems or centers as they'd already begun their decaying process. But connecting the dots still made distinct labels, and whimpering for their cruelty, I immediately covered _MONSTER_ with my lips and kissed every scab.

Erik had tensed upon revealing the calligraphy on his torso, but as kisses were my answer, he moaned in reply and cupped my curl-encased crown in his palm. My fingers moved ahead of my tasting mouth and caressed the letters of _DEMON_ and _MURDERER_ out of order. I touched from the center first, never rewriting their heinous appellations. If I broke them into syllables and single letters, I could make new words, new titles that did not carry such hatred.

_RAPIST_… That one needed the most care, and tearing my lips from a heart that sped its beats with my actions, I slid to my knees and pressed a frantic kiss to that most vicious word. I was about to make its relentlessly wicked definition untrue.

My mouth was fervent, devouring the epithet as if I could wipe it from existence, and shuddering violently against me, Erik wove his fingers in my hair and stared at every motion through hazy half-closed eyes.

Parting my kissing lips, I let my tongue tease and remind him that this was _skin_, not carved stone. No, there were cells that _felt_ and carried sensations through the body with every touch. These particular cells had been brutalized and damaged, but they still could burn and tingle. They were not worthless.

As my tongue lapped every letter, my hand dared to slide within the waistband of his pants and graze his hard length. He cried out at first contact, and I nearly smiled to savor the sound. _RAPIST_? Surely, I proved it was a lie as my hand encircled his shaft and moved up and down over him, feeling the wetness already leaking out and coating my palm. I could hardly wait until he was within me, staining me inside and making me _his_.

This was my husband; his body belonged to me as much as to him. Eager to show him, I pulled my hand free, but only to guide pants and undershorts from his straining hardness. He watched me with those passion-laced eyes, encouraging me in brilliant shades of green and blue, as I claimed his manhood with my urgent kiss.

Oh God, how I loved the look of desire on that disfigured face! It was such a beautiful sight, and it was all _mine_. The Opera Ghost had never been touched before me, had never touched another, had never even wanted to. I was the only one privileged enough to own his desire and its every detail. What a blessing!

Aching to drive desire higher, I took him into my mouth and began a game I knew he loved but could not withstand for long. The first time I'd kissed his hardness had been at his shy request and full of my furious blushes and awkwardness. Now I was well-versed in how to make him melt and moved my mouth over him, confident and so deliciously brazen that I tingled.

He only let me continue until his moans became guttural cries, and then drawing me away with a tug to my hair, he finished undressing and pulled me to the couch. I obeyed every unspoken command, gazing into his heated eyes as I lay back on the cushions and he lowered his body on top of me. To feel him skin to skin! I cried out and almost succumbed to tears because I had been aching so desperately to have this again.

He did not hesitate, and I did not want him to, parting my legs and inviting his invasion. He thrust deep, moaning against my temple in harmony with my sharp cry. The second he lifted his head and met my gaze with such worry that he'd hurt me was the second I saw my Erik without a single question who he was. I knew that look and that constant compassion, that _love_, and I smiled and wove tight arms about his neck, certain I'd never let him go again.

His misshapen mouth found mine in a kiss that went on and on as he moved within my slick body, pushing me into the couch cushions with every thrust. Bare and pressed together, we created our own inferno. He'd once told me that he'd grown accustomed to being always cold, practically a cold-blooded creature, but making love to me had melted the ice inside his veins and warmed his heart so completely that we would have to stay joined forever and keep the chill away. I thought of that now as I wove my legs about his and drew him deeper, soldering us as one.

His hands idly stroked whatever skin they found, roaming my shoulders and elbows, slipping down to trace my ribs. It felt as if his fingers spurred a trail of light and lava, leaving goose bumps that rose with so much sensation. Passion was in those awe-inspiring hands, and as they slid between our bodies to caress my breasts, I couldn't control the wildfire within me. One more thrust sent me over the edge. As I cried out my elation against his kissing mouth, I caught his bottom lip between mine and sucked hard enough to make him groan and shiver.

"Christine," he breathed as he drew his mouth away and adored me in his fond smile. "I remember this feeling. I remember being inside of you like this, feeling you explode beneath me in your pleasure, burning my body in your liquid heat…" His eyes beamed in the colors of his heart. "You are perfection. …I love you so!"

He'd said those words to me before, the night I'd told him about the baby, and hearing them again, I sobbed aloud and covered his face in frantic kisses. More, more, I couldn't seem to have enough. I wanted everything he was for the rest of our lives, and it seemed he understood the insatiable hunger and soul-deep craving as he thrust harder, his tempo increasing. My hands spanned his back, trailing down over his buttocks and up again to the nape of his neck, wanting his skin to leave marks all over mine, anything to insist to every cruel person in the world that I was his and would stand at his side through every vile act inflicted and every atrocious slander thrown at us. I loved him.

Practically with the thought, I felt him shudder and spasm as he found release, shouting his ecstasy before repeating my name over and over again. His arms slid between my body and the couch and clung to me so fiercely tight. He loved me… I smiled to kiss his brow and know that he was mine again. It was almost a second happy ending.


	5. Chapter 5

Here you go! The final installment of this story! Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed it. It was an emotional rollercoaster to write as I'm sure you can tell. More stories coming very soon! And please check out my story collections; they make wonderful Christmas gifts for the phan in your life. And the newest collection _Manifestations of a Phantom's Soul: The Untold Darkness_, out this Friday.

* * *

><p>Our life together was pleasant, though different from our first six months of marriage. Erik still could not remember our past and aside from feelings he now did not fight, I was yet the empty hole in his blanket of memories. He loved me; he knew he loved me; he just couldn't remember why. I tried my best to inspire memory's resurrection, even going up into the opera house with him and haunting the corridors of our history. Parts brought a sense of somberness, but I was determined to try good <em>and<em> bad, whatever it took to help.

In truth, I was content with the way things had become, but… I caught so many flickers of recollection: words he'd say that he'd said months before, things he did, fragments from our past. I refused to believe it was gone. For all the pain we'd endured, it had shaped us into the people and story we now had. It was important even if not imperative to our future.

The baby was an ever-present topic of discussion between us. Though he still seemed uneasy with its existence, he asked me one night about his reaction when I'd first told him. I was hesitant to broach an answer, recalling how his Opera Ghost mentality had insisted he'd lied and could not possibly accept a baby's creation.

"You were…happy," I told him, careful in choosing my next words as I sat beside him on the couch. "You kissed my belly where the baby is growing and spoke to it, introduced yourself as its father. And…maybe it _was_ a lie, as you claim. Maybe you weren't as pleased as you seemed, but…I prefer my memory of that night, lie or not, because I believe that in time even a lie like that can become the truth."

He didn't argue it with me as I'd expected, didn't give an answer, but that night as we made love, he pressed an adoring kiss to my belly, holding it there for long, sweet moments. It was the best answer he could have given.

* * *

><p>It had been almost a month since Erik's attack. Everyday found our life a little closer to its normal script, and I enjoyed the peace and being able to put more focus on the baby. I was just beginning to show, not much beyond a slight swell. Fully clothed, it was still unrecognizable, but…I <em>felt<em> pregnant and noticed how often I simply rested my hand against my belly as if the baby could feel it, too.

That was how Erik found me one evening. I was at the piano and had been poking pitches to an aria I wanted to sing but had grown distracted halfway through and was once again touching the baby with my idle thoughts.

Kneeling at my feet, Erik covered my hand with his. Dear God, how I adored every freely-given touch! I could almost pretend none of the chaos of lost memories and painful moments had occurred…until he spoke and cracked the illusion.

"I was your teacher," he said. "Even if I can't remember it or where we left off, I want to be teacher again and dive into the music with you."

It had been the one point I had not pushed yet, but I missed our lesson time together and making him proud with my talent. Nodding with a grin, I replied, "When shall we start then, _ange_?"

"As soon as I get back."

"Back?" I asked with a nervous fear of letting him walk out the door. "Where are you going?"

"A meeting. I meant to surprise you, but…" He shrugged with the tinge of a smile. "I'm exploring options to find a real home for us, somewhere in the sun. After all, a baby cannot be raised in these dark, dank passages so far from the world."

It had been a consideration that felt ages away now, before I'd realized how naïve it truly was. "But, Erik, after the attack… I don't want to risk your welfare. Everyone knows of the Opera Ghost."

"_Here_ they do, but it's a big world. I know we can find someplace safe, even if we must leave our home to do it. I hope to enlist someone to search and find us something suitable: a good distance from any sort of city, preferably a house with lots of windows and a large, spacious room for a grand piano. What do you think?"

I was yet apprehensive, and he must have glimpsed my fears in my eyes, adding, "I promise to be on my guard, Christine. I don't see why you must continue to depreciate the Opera Ghost's menacing danger. Anyone who crosses my path is someone you should fear for, not me."

His offense was sharp, but I no longer backed down even a fraction when facing it. Narrowing my stare, I replied, "The Opera Ghost is _not_ omnipotent, and until you can prove me wrong, I will worry to my heart's content and count myself lucky every time you walk through the door unscathed."

His scowl was half in mocking. "All right, have it your way. Worry all you like, and when I get home, I will provide ample distraction to make you forget every ounce of anxiety."

One kiss went with that provocative promise, and then he lifted the mask over the face I adored and left for his errand.

Oh God… My tension started with my first breath alone. It was going to be a _long_ evening.

For awhile I managed to keep busy, working a bit longer on the aria with intent now that I had a teacher to impress again. But concentration quickly dwindled and left me miserably contemplating horror stories.

When a knock came to the door, I believed one of those terror tales was beginning. Chastising my pessimism, I went to answer, nervous all over again to learn my guest's identity.

"Good evening, Madame," the Persian man bid, lifting off his chapeau and giving a slight bow of his dark head.

I remained cautious as I told him, "Erik isn't here."

"I know. I passed him in the catacombs on my way. He was positively blissful. I thought for a moment his memory had returned and was sad when he told me that wasn't the case."

Shaking a disappointed head, I gestured for him to enter and replied as he did, "No, but I have more hope now than ever. He remembers he loves me, and that's a start."

"A very good start," he agreed. "Very good indeed."

"And I suppose now that you're here, you can see for yourself that I am well and certainly not a casualty of the Opera Ghost."

The Persian chuckled. "Certainly not! I daresay that you, my dear, have conquered the Opera Ghost _twice_. Did you realize? I am in awe of your strength and resilience. I truly did not give you due credit the last time, but you have some sort of power in your spirit, Madame. It seems you can change the world with it."

I was shy beneath such praise and insisted back, "I love him. Perhaps love is a power unto itself."

"It would seem so. …I'm only sorry to have doubted you."

"Well, …now that you see I've mended the Opera Ghost's dastardly ways again, you can tell the Vicomte that he has nothing worth worrying over."

"The Vicomte?"

His confusion struck me sourly, and I stammered, "Yes, he…he was here. He said _you_ told him the way through the catacombs."

The Persian shook a bewildered head. "Why would I do that?"

"Because…he told you he thought I was in danger. Did…didn't he come to see you, Monsieur? Didn't he demand that you help his case? Please…tell me the truth." I grew more frenzied with every question, desperate for the answers I thought I already had.

"The Vicomte never came to see me, Madame."

I felt the floor sway with the revelation, my urgent mind trying to devise alternative explanations that did not exist.

"But…if I may be so bold to say so, I think it best you stay away from the Vicomte," he added, his concern written on every feature along with secrets behind locked doors.

"Why?" I was terrified of the reason, and when he spoke, I felt every word like a punch to the gut.

"Because Erik's attack was not an accident. It was no coincidence that those deviants crossed his path that night."

I didn't believe in coincidences.

Swallowing slowly, the Persian went on, "You know I was investigating what happened that night. From what I've learned, …someone paid Erik's assailants to be waiting for his return and attack him. I haven't yet found viable proof, but…it was someone with wealth and title, and…the Vicomte has quite a vendetta against Erik. It's not farfetched."

I didn't want to listen, didn't want the thoughts that came, but…knowledge learned could not be unlearned. Suspicion tickled the back of my throat and condemned before the Persian finished talking.

"I…I don't want to believe that," I stuttered. "Raoul…he's a good man. He wouldn't…" I'd broken his heart. What lengths had Erik gone to over a broken heart?

"As I said, I'm still seeking proof, but until I have answers, stay away from the Vicomte de Chagny."

"He…he was here. He said he needed to check on me," I revealed, guilty when my admission felt like the proof he wanted. "He still loves me…"

The Persian gave a matter-of-fact look, and I knew the conclusion was drawn, case closed. The Vicomte had had a hand in Erik's attack, and I suddenly needed to know _how much_ of a hand. Had he been an assailant himself? Hidden behind a hood or mask of his own to go unrecognized? Had he actually paid his accomplices for Erik's _death_ instead?

My head spun with my contemplations, but I had to put up a decent pretense until the Persian was gone. Then…then I needed answers and knew the one place to get them.

* * *

><p>It was dark when I stepped onto the city streets and was engulfed in the humid summer night air. I felt as awkward as the last time I'd made this journey, uncomfortable being among people, but this time with the suspicion that my once-hero was really a villain in disguise, I felt wiser. How naïve to have never considered this turn of events! Both Erik and Raoul had tried to blame the attack on God when a very valid blameworthy party existed. Why had I never pondered it before?<p>

Arriving on the Vicomte's doorstep, I did not hesitate to knock. _Wanting_ to enter a potential lion's den seemed foolish, but I truly did not perceive danger. Not from Raoul, not my former friend, suitor, and fiancé. I _knew_ him, …didn't I?

When the maid answered, I was in the throes of uncertainty, ready to turn and run for home, but before the maid could even question me, a voice behind her called, "Christine… Oh, thank goodness!"

The Vicomte gazed at me with those blue eyes, and I tried to see through a so-called façade. There had to be at least a flicker to tell me what he'd done… Why couldn't I find it?

"Come in, come in," he called, gesturing the maid to leave us be. I let him catch my hand and draw me into the parlor, still searching his features. Where was the crack?

"What are you doing here?" he urgently demanded. "What happened? Did the monster hurt you?"

My expression was solemnly cast as I sadly bid, "They carved _monster_ into his body. Did you tell them to do that, or was that their own idea?"

"What are you talking about?"

But I jerked my hand free of his and snapped, "_Monster, demon, murderer, rapist… Rapist_, Raoul? I thought they'd figured out I was with him because of the cradle he'd purchased that night, but they already knew because _you_ told them. The words were _yours_, but was it your intent to have them cut into my husband's body?"

"Christine," Raoul bid with defenselessly raised hands. "I don't know what you're talking about. It's as if…you're accusing _me_ of the monster's attack."

I shook my head. "Accusing means there is still doubt. I'm _blaming_ you, plain and straightforward, pinning every crime that happened that night on your shoulders. I can see it in your eyes. I don't know you at all."

"Christine-"

He reached for me, and I recoiled in my place, glaring as if a touch was a crime. His brow furrowed with hurt as he softly revealed, "I did it for _you_."

"Me? He's my _husband_; _you_ are not allowed to play games anymore when I belong to another man."

"_Belong to_… Exactly!" the Vicomte insisted, frantic for me to understand. "You are a _thing_ to him! He's kept you locked in his hell for _months_ without reprieve! It isn't right!"

"So you had him beaten and left for dead?" I demanded in a shout. "Was _death_ your intent, Raoul? Have I misjudged you so much that you've now become a murderer?"

"_He_ is a murderer-"

"Answer my question!"

"Yes, answer my wife's question, Monsieur Vicomte. We are all eager and impatient to know."

I gasped as I flipped about and found a masked face glancing between Raoul and me with avid interest. "Erik, how did you get here so quickly?"

"That was _my_ doing," the Persian man spoke up as he exited Erik's shadow.

"Yes," Erik agreed, "you see, the daroga ignorantly left his chapeau in our home, and when he returned to get it and found you gone, he sought me out. He had quite a story for me, Monsieur Vicomte, about how you decided to play God and rid the world of the Opera Ghost."

The Vicomte sneered at Erik, and standing between the two men, I cupped a protective hand over my belly and lifted agitated eyes to my husband. "Erik…"

"It's all right, Christine-"

"Yes, calm her fears," the Vicomte yelled over us, "and then take her back home and cage her in the dark. Will she receive a decent punishment for coming to my door? How do you punish her? Is sharing your bed enough, or are bruises and fists involved? Was this baby meant to be a further chain to make sure she can never leave you?"

"I don't _want_ to leave him," I spoke up, but the gentlemen all around me did not seem to value my opinion as past vendettas, even forgotten ones, took center stage.

"Ah, I see," Erik remarked with an arrogant smirk. "So you wished me dead to make her a prisoner in _your_ home instead."

"If it had been done right, I would not need to create a defense right now," Raoul snapped. "You'd be dead, and Christine would finally open her eyes and see the truth. She stays with you because she is _afraid_ to leave. Monsieur daroga agrees."

All eyes darted to the Persian who glared coldly at the Vicomte.

"You are not innocent in this," Raoul spat. "Tell them. You agreed with my case."

"Daroga?" Erik questioned, voice tight with repressed rage.

Sighing heavily, the Persian replied, "No one had seen her for months, Erik. It seemed a valid fear at the time, and then…I saw you in the catacombs gushing over a potential baby, and if she were indeed a prisoner, a child… I couldn't see her wanting it."

Growling his rage, Erik lunged at the Persian man and caught his shirtfront in his clawed hands. "And so you sided yet again with my enemy? Daroga, I ought to strangle the breath from your betraying lungs!"

"I didn't know the Vicomte intended your death!" the Persian shouted in desperation. "I told the secret path through the catacombs; I take responsibility for betrayal, but when I'd heard you'd been beaten… Erik, I rushed to help you!"

"Help? Of course, to ease your guilty conscience! You conniving bastard!"

I was engrossed in the scene and did not feel Raoul's closeness until he grabbed my arms behind my back. "Now do you see?" he hissed in my ear. "He's a monster, a murderer. He will kill anyone who crosses him."

"And yet did I not _spare_ your pathetic life, Monsieur Vicomte?" Erik abruptly demanded, attention shifted to Raoul. "It would have been my greatest pleasure to _kill_ you, but surprisingly, I possess a heart. I let you go because I was so sure Christine would hurt with your loss. And you couldn't have thought the same? That Christine would hurt and mourn had I died? That she'd have to raise our child alone? How selfish of you, Monsieur!"

The details came out so easily, without a jolt or startled tremor to proclaim something like a miracle had happened. _I_ was the one to lose a gasp, realizing it even before he did.

"Erik," I said softly, tears in my eyes.

He gazed at me with all the layers of love and all the depths of heart and soul that had been missing. I looked into eyes that had loved me since the first moment they'd seen me.

All he said in reply was, "I know you…" And I understood. Celebration would come later, but first…

Setting the Persian back on his feet, Erik faced Raoul and commanded, "Let go of my wife."

"Why?" Raoul instigated, tightening his grip on my arms. "So you can manipulate her into thinking _you_ are the hero again?"

"Between the two of us, I'd say without doubt that I _am_ the hero," Erik declared. "Now let her go. Even heroes can act with violence to save those they love. Don't test me. I've had your neck in my noose before."

Raoul kept his grip one more long breath, staring eye to eye with Erik as if goading him, but finally with a huff, he released my arms. "If she's so adamant that _you_ are her hero, then I will only ever be the villain in her eyes. That's _not_ what I wanted. Christine… I love you."

The sentiment was real and hurt my heart because I couldn't return it and have it mean something. "I'm sorry," I desolately replied and stepped closer to Erik's side. I saw relief behind the mask and such an unending vat of love. Love within every memory recalled on the surface of mismatched eyes.

"You may consider the warning implied," Erik told Raoul, harsh and grating. "And if you dare to venture into my domain again, be forewarned that I've set new traps. If you die by their devices, I am not responsible. Come, daroga."

Erik guided me to the door with the Persian two steps behind. I cast one look back at Raoul's dejected face, but I couldn't feel guilt anymore. Raoul had tried to destroy my life and my happiness. Erik was right; that was selfish.

On the Paris streets, we kept to dark alleyways. I never knew even a flicker of fear with the Opera Ghost as my guardian. He had my arm tucked firmly against his side and glanced at me every so often with that _love_ I'd spent weeks desperate to see.

"You are quite fortunate I got my memories back, daroga," Erik commented sharply, and I peeked back at the defeated posture of the small Persian man. "They are the only reason you stand here now."

"You…you remember, Erik?" the Persian inquired with a happiness that seemed so genuine that I hoped I could trust it. My judge of character was too askew lately to credit.

"Yes, and I remember coming to for a brief minute in that alley to find you crying over my body and begging forgiveness. You said 'it wasn't supposed to happen like this'."

"Erik… I'm sorry I betrayed you," the Persian insisted. "The Vicomte kept insisting Christine was a prisoner, and…I never thought he'd have you attacked, never anything so vile and cruel. …Please forgive me."

Erik never answered. He just held me closer to his side and sped our pace back into the darkness.

* * *

><p>We left the Persian outside the opera house, but as we entered the catacombs, Erik bid, "You know the way back to the house. Go and lock yourself inside. I need to set a few more traps. The daroga knows the path, and I'm not taking any chances."<p>

"Then you don't trust his explanation," I concluded and saw his shrug despite the shadows surrounding.

"I do, but he's too easily swayed when he shouldn't be. He thought he was doing the right thing. I can't begrudge him that, but that doesn't mean I'll hand over my secrets ever again. I only put my faith in _you_. Christine…" He caught my hand and made me face him an instant longer. "I intend to devour you when I get home and make up for _weeks_ of constructing walls between us again. I love you."

I smiled bright and without the heaviness I'd been subject to for too long. Happily ever after was back on course.

* * *

><p>I couldn't contain my impatience as I stalked a pacing path before the hearth and waited for Erik's return. My mind was reliving the night's events with an unending sense of disbelief.<p>

Raoul… I could hardly imagine him plotting such deceit. My God, I'd even gone to him when Erik had first been hurt! Perhaps it had proven to him that he had done the right thing. I'd gullibly played along and shown he could still be the hero. I doubted I'd ever be able to think on him again and not feel betrayed and a certain abhorrence for the boy I'd once cared so much for.

My back was to the door when I heard it open, and flipping about with wide, expectant eyes, I saw my adored husband and could not stop a well of tears.

"Erik, _ange_…"

"I feel like I haven't truly looked upon you in weeks. Good God, Christine, can you ever forgive me?"

My sob was my answer as I dove into his arms and buried my face against his flustered heartbeat. That agitated pulsation insisted the genuine fear within him, fear I dubbed ridiculous. What was there to forgive?

"You remarkable, amazing woman," he crooned against my crown. "You fought for my love even when I denied you and rejected you at every turn. Christine, I'm so sorry. …I didn't mean to forget you…"

I only sobbed harder with his words, fisting my hands in his jacket. I could hear the matching tears in his voice, and without a thought, I lifted my hand to the mask and yanked it away, eager to feel his tears and know they sparkled in _love_. The nightmare was over, and I was awake and my world was not gone.

We held each other like that for a long time, re-soldering every chipped edge. I had convinced myself that earning the Opera Ghost's love a second time was enough, and I could live without anything lost in the gamble, but to feel my Erik and know he remembered the second he saw me, the first time I spoke his name, the first time I touched him, the second he knew he loved me… Such things _did_ matter. They were our story.

He sighed as he rubbed his disfigured face into my hair and slid his hands down my back, but as his fingers tangled in the silk of my wrap, sighs lost to a fitful moan.

"Are you wearing anything underneath your wrap?" he demanded, and I heard a smile before I ever peeked up at his face.

"No," I answered simply. "I was promised I would be devoured. Underclothes seemed obtrusive."

He chuckled, and I closed my eyes to relish the sound. "My brazen little wife. How I missed you without ever realizing it! I had you here in my arms, in my bed, and yet there were walls everywhere inside. You were locked in my mind, and I didn't have the key to let you out."

The imagery in his words reminded me of Raoul believing I was a bird in a cage. Not a cage, this was _paradise_, and I was the only one lucky enough to find it and be trapped in its wonder.

"What are we going to do now, Erik?" I asked with a tinge of anxiousness.

"_I_ am going to _devour_ you; that is first," he concluded, his hands searching for the partition in my wrap. "And then it's time for us to leave this place, Christine. The next chapter of our story is written somewhere else."

I sighed my hopelessness. "I thought we'd finally reached our happy ending."

"Ending?" he inquired with a laugh. "No, no, this is just the _beginning_, _ange_. How contrived and mundane a love story would be if it _ended_ at the good part! We have pages and pages to fill about our new life and our new home, about our…baby." He paused with the word and caressed my belly with his palm. "No, Christine, forget 'happily ever after'. I want 'to be continued' and I want our story to go on forever."

Oh, such words! And when I'd spent my adolescence building fairytale dreams, his assessment re-sculpted my view. Why happily ever after when there was so much more life to live? It was an epiphany.

"All right," I agreed. "When does volume two begin?"

"Two? This might be three after a stint of amnesia and another traumatic climax full of death threats and danger. Our Vicomte woes deserve an entire volume unto themselves," Erik teased, and I grinned brighter. "The most poignant end to our current volume would be a salacious love scene. After all, our readers have waited for just that. And the next volume turns its first page at sunrise when I whisk you away on a journey to find our new home. Are we in agreement?"

I nodded, but excitement dulled its fervor as his hand finally slid within the partition of my wrap and stroked my bare thigh. Forget endings and continuations. I wanted time to stop right here in these blissful moments of being together. I wanted this to be the suspension between scenes, and I wanted us to linger a bit longer. If only…

"I love you, Christine," he vowed as his fingers slid inside my wetness and made me whimper. "I promise that even when I didn't know your face and I insisted I couldn't love you, I did. It's always been _you_. I was born to love you."

I would have said the same, perhaps poured saccharine devotions from my lips, but his hand was too incessant and robbed me of my letters with a touch.

He moaned as his probing fingers thrust deep, and kissing my temple, he bid, "Is this our happy ending, Christine?"

But I turned my head and kissed his lips delicately before I whispered, "To be continued forever…"


End file.
